ElliilsiMiP 







Class H 



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Book.^ 



Copyright }1°. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



AN AMERICAN WITH 
LORD ROBERTS 



A N 

AMERICAN 

WITH 

LORD 
ROBERTS 



^j; J U LI A N ]R A L P H 

Special War Correspondent to the '-^ Dally MaiV* 

Author <?/' "Towards Pretoria," "Alone in 
China/' "i\.N Angel in a Web,'* etc. 



FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

One Copy Received 

FEB. 21 1901 

Copyright entry 

CLASS <^XXc. No. 

COPY A. 



H;Lh^4>- ^JL 




9,b 



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Copyright, 1901, 
»V FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY. 



PREFACE 



These records of the South African war, in con- 
tinuation of my former volume, " Towards Pretoria," 
are practically fresh, and are mainly on subjects of 
wide interest. They include material which has never 
been published anywhere, as well as much that has 
not before been presented to the American public. 

Even those chapters which originally appeared in 
the " Daily Mail " as letters from the front have, in 
many cases, been recast and extended. I desire here 
to thank Mr. Alfred Harmsworth for his generous per- 
mission to make this new use of the material. 

One chapter appeared in " Harper's Magazine," and 
another in " The Century Magazine," and these, also, 
have been subjected to material changes. 

The fault of delay in the publication of the book is 
thus, I hope, atoned for by the careful revision of 
that which was not new, and the liberal addition of 
material especially prepared for this work. 

THE AUTHOR. 
January^ igoi. 



CONTENTS 



?AGB 



CHAPTER 

I. The Teuton Tug of War i 

II. An Invisible Enemy 25 

III. The Veldt and its People 30 

IV. A Day of Modern War 40 

V. Told in Music by the Pipes 48 

VI. Officers and Aristocrats 56 

VII. Rescue of the Queen of Diamonds 62 

VIII. Heroines of Kimberley 68 

IX. Heroes of the Siege 77 

X. Boer Bravery and Honour 84 

XL Cronje as a Prisoner 96 

XII. Freeing the Free State 102 

XIII. The Taking of Bloemfontein 115 

XIV. Waiting, not Wasting Time 126 

XV. The Brighter Side of War 134 

XVI. Bitter Hate for Sweetest Love 139 

XVII. War Correspondents of To-day 153 

XVni. Valour Gloriously Framed 164 

XIX. "Fair Women and Brave Men" 182 

XX. How to Deal with the Enemy .......... 193 



4 CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXI. Boers as Fellow-Townsmen 200 

XXII. Plans for the Great Advance 208 

XXIII. Striding to Pretoria 213 

XXIV. Lord Roberts, Master of Men 221 

XXV. A Group of Generals 232 

XXVI. British Officers and Chaplains 239 

XXVII. A Word of Complaint and Another of 

Praise 249 

XXVIII. Ringed Round by Spies 261 

XXIX. The Romance of Funk 269 

XXX. A Railway Record 284 

XXXI. South Africa's Future 294 

XXXII. The Lessons of the War 301 



AN AMERICAN WITH LORD ROBERTS. 



CHAPTER I 

THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 

When Field-Marshal Lord Roberts came out to 
South Africa he came to take the command in what 
had every outward aspect of a losing game. The army 
was not daunted, though it was checked. The people 
of England were not despondent, but they were de- 
pressed, and they had yielded their spirits to be alter- 
nately swept along upon high waves of exultation, or 
dashed down into gulfs of anxious misgiving. They 
did not at first realise that their armies were fighting a 
country quite as much as an enemy ; that the veldt 
offered a problem which no army had ever before en- 
countered ; that in British colonies the conditions of 
civil war were present, and had to be suppressed. The 
Boer was, perhaps, the least difficult to overcome of 
these three novel obstacles in the army's path, and the 

British public realised that they were not doing as 

I 



2 THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 

gloriously as they were wont ; they were not even 
having their own way slowly, and so each citizen be- 
came a critic of all the generals who were at the front. 

When Lord Roberts actually arrived, the force in the 
field was not seeing the daybreak of a change for the 
better from any single point at which it was halted. 
Over in Natal an army was locked up in Ladysmith, 
with the Boers holding the door, and an outer force 
battering at it and at them in vain. In the south. 
General French, the cavalry leader who had done so 
splendidly at Elandslaagte, and was yet to do as well 
under Lord Roberts, was harassing the Boers with 
spirited and incessant energy along such a front as only 
the latest warfare produces— a thirty to forty mile 
position, but he was not gaining ground. On the west, 
Lord Methuen had run the front wheels of his army 
against a boulder called Maaghersfontein, and could 
not get over it. It was to this state of things that the 
Field-Marshal came, and, by the magic of his name and 
presence, by his unerring instinct and masterly resource, 
by his commanding genius and sound strategy, he al- 
tered the entire situation in what now seems no time 
at all — as with a blow. 

Let us look back over the experience of Lord 
Methuen, who seemed for a time to be conducting a 
military waltz rather than a mere promenade from the 
Orange River to Kimberley. We shall see that it was 
the country of the Boers that he was fighting, quite as 



THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 3 

much if not more than the Boers of the country. To 
begin with, the British set up an advanced supply sta- 
tion at De Aar, in Cape Colony, eighty miles below the 
Orange River. There they gathered in profuse abun- 
dance all that could be needed by an army in the field : 
horses, mules, carts, forage, food, saddles, uniforms, ac- 
coutrements, shoes, harness — everything. When they 
had half their stores there, the tents and corrugated 
iron sheds in which they were stored were closely packed 
in the middle of a valley commanded on the right and 
left by kopjes, with a wide open piece of veldt to the 
southward, and a narrow pass at the other end. They 
had but few troops to guard the treasure, and they did 
not fortify the hills. When the largest amount of 
stores was there they had only one regiment of infantry, 
a battery, and a corps of scouts to defend the place. 
They dug trenches across the veldt, and fortified the 
principal hill on either side ; but even then they could 
not have withstood such an attacking force as it would 
have been well worth an enemy's while to send for- 
ward. 

Thus at the very outset the country itself — the pecul- 
iar surface and nature of the ground — began to tell 
against the British. No attack was made ; yet they 
were surrounded by Boers and rebels. Practically 
every so-called farmer in the neighbourhood was up in 
arms ; rebels were in and out of the camp all day and 
every day, pretending to have horses, forage, or garden- 



4 THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 

stuff to sell. Commandoes were hovering about in the 
north, on both sides, and never far off ; yet no attack 
was made. This proved that the Boer knew the true 
value of his country, and that he had begun to use it to 
the best advantage. He could hold a place like De 
Aar with a thousand men against ten thousand, but he 
would not attack it — or any place, or any one — unless 
the natural surrounding offered nearly complete shelter 
to himself. He attacked in the open in daylight but 
once or twice in these seven months ; he made a night 
attack once only, I believe. De Aar, then, was un- 
molested because the Boer used himself and his strange 
surroundings in combination. In what follows we 
shall see how he did this, and what proportion of the 
impediments in the way of British success should be 
credited to the character of the land round Great 
Britain's army. 

The South African veldt is the most easily defended 
country in the world — " the best defensive country " 
is how a military man might put it. On every mile or 
two there is a natural fort — or half a dozen of them. 
These are the so-called kopjes, short, thick, volcanic- 
looking hills, often with a squared-off summit or a 
crater-like bowl on the top, such as Majuba has. They 
are rocky hills, but not rocky as the reader is likely to 
understand the term, for these are nothing but rocks — 
hills made of rocks, so that the surface is a fret-work 
of the outermost boulders. Between and around these 



THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 5 

kopjes lies the veldt, which always looks level, but is 
never s6. 

It looks level because it is a dead and dull monot- 
ony of baked earth, sage tufts, and stones, any single 
acre being precisely like the next hundred or ten thou- 
sand. Instead of being smooth, it rises and falls in 
earth billows, and often in the depression behind the 
ridge of such a billow an army can move. I have seen 
a long railway train lost on an apparently level veldt 
when it turned into one of these depressions. But 
there is far better cover for the Boers than these afford. 
There are the so-called nullahs and spruits, which seam 
the veldt in millions of places. No one can see them 
until he is almost upon them, yet there troops can 
move unseen on horseback. In hundreds of them the 
whole Boer army could ride invisible for miles. At 
Belmont I was watching the retreating Boers and the 
pursuing mounted men. Looking down from the 
kopje's top, I saw the entire cavalcade suddenly disap- 
pear as if the earth had yawned and swallowed it. I 
went to the place afterward, and found that it was one 
of these rifts made by a torrent in the rainy season, a 
dozen or fourteen feet deep, and a great deal wider. 
Had the British mounted force pushed on they would 
have been decimated before they saw this gutter, but 
fortunately their horses were too jaded, and they did 
not go so far. 

At Modder River, on the left of the Boers' main po- 



6 THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 

sition, they used a part of one of these huge cracks 
in the earth as a kraal (corral) for their horses. This 
was a spruit, but, being bone-dry, was the same as a 
nullah. You could hide a two-storied house in it, and 
it ran to the river from a distance of half a mile. Here 
all their horses were knee-haltered and left with forage, 
and when the Boers retreated they ran to this place, 
under cover of the river-side trees and shrubbery, 
sprang to saddle, and rode the full length of the gutter 
before they could have been seen — had it been day- 
light. 

Only think what their position was at Modder 
River ! Here they took advantage of the extraordi- 
nary defensive qualities of one of their rivers, qualities 
not to be found elsewhere. These South African riv- 
ers are, during nine months in the year, narrow, shal- 
low, muddy streams that form a mere ribbon in the 
centre of a very wide, very deep cavity in the earth. 
The configuration of this bed is marked or terraced, as 
if to show the varying heights to which the river rises. 
There is, first, a short but precipitous fall from the 
level of the veldt to where the incline of the bed be- 
gins. Small trees and shrubs grow on this slope down 
to the point which the water reaches in normal seasons 
of flood. Below this incline is a flat, broad bed, all 
paved with large, smooth-topped stones. In the mid- 
dle of this bed flows the normal river. 

Thus these rivers are, like the dry clefts in the veldt, 



THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 7 

natural defensive positions, ready-made trenches, im- 
promptu sunken forts. We shall see, by describing 
how the Boers used the Modder at the battle of that 
name (and again at Paardeberg, where Cronje surren- 
dered), how perfect a defence such a place gives, and 
how skilfully the Boers use the opportunities their 
ground offers. 

They dug a trench parallel with the river-bank, close 
to its edge, and turned the excavated earth into a 
breastwork, in which they stuck boughs and branches 
of trees to blend with the foliage behind them. Here 
riflemen, thousands strong, took their position, and 
held it for nearly twelve hours, without its ever being 
known to most of the British troops, whose progress 
they stopped, whether the Boers were on the same side 
of the river as themselves or on the farther side. Of 
such immense value is smokeless powder. By its use 
the Boers, whose chief aim is to keep out of sight, 
made even their fire— their fighting— invisible. 

We have seen that the South African river-beds 
begin with a sheer declivity, a precipitous outer edge. 
This wall provided shelter for the officers, stretcher- 
bearers, ammunition-distributors, and water-carriers, 
who passed freely and safely up and down the rear of 
their line, even on horseback, if they were so minded. 
Those who had occasion to pass to and from the 
trenches and this deep-sheltered ^'runway" found 
that the plentiful vegetation, skirting the bed's edge 



8 THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 

in a narrow but dense line, gave them their needed 
chance to remain out of view of the British. 

As a rule the adjacent land slopes toward a river, but 
South African topography violates all rules, and at this 
place the land inclined downward and away from the 
stream, so that every object as large as a jack-rabbit 
could be seen by the entrenched Boers at a distance of 
three miles. There appears, now, to have been nothing 
but luck in our winning that battle. It was the former 
belief that there were 7,000 or 8,000 Boers in those 
trenches, but there were nothing like so many, in all prob- 
ability. Yet they held the British flat upon their stom- 
achs all day,while they pumped lead over their heads as I 
verily believe bullets were never shot before. They did 
no other fighting than to stay in a gutter and shoot. It 
was their country that perplexed and hindered the British 
most, for many of them did not even know the Boers* 
whereabouts. They never saw them. At last a handful 
of ever-valorous, recklessly brave men got across the 
river, and cheered with an Anglo-Saxon " Hip, hip, 
hurrah ! " in order to warn a British battery and some 
of their own men not to continue shooting in that di- 
rection. At this sound the Boers, imagining that 
10,000 men were about to flank them, took alarm and 
fled. 

Another feature of the veldt which helps to make 
this land easily defensible against any power on earth, 
is that it is scored and seamed by the usually dry beds 



THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 9 

of the small tributaries of the rivers. These are deep, 
broad, steep-walled trenches dug into the earth by run- 
ning water, and cannot be seen until you are within a 
few score yards of them. It was in one of these, called 
Corne Spruit, a little tributary of the Modder near 
Bloemfontein, that General Broadwood's convoy was 
trapped, when he was being shelled by an enemy that 
he supposed was entirely in his rear. The Boers sud- 
denly came out from their hiding-places in the spruit, 
and demanded the surrender of the waggons, and also 
of the guns of a battery which had been driven into 
the web. This was another instance of utilising nature 
as an ally, and also a fine bit of strategy, the finest the 
Boers had then worked out. 

But South African land formation has not contented 
herself with assisting her lords and masters merely with 
hollows, ridges, sluits, spruits, and kopjes. In order 
to provide a fortification to every square mile of 
the land, she has devised stone breastworks. These 
are oftenest found at the foot of a kopje, but 
the rule has such plentiful exceptions that no one 
can know where he will come across a collection 
of great boulders behind which men may hide and at- 
tack wild game or human foe. These collections of 
great black rocks may comprise a few in an irregular 
line or two, or they may cumber a square half-mile of 
the veldt, thrown over it thickly and in confusion. 
These the Boers can utilise on the open veldt, or as they 



lo THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 

did at Maaghersfontein, they may fringe the foot of sl 
kopje, and, with the added help of bushes, may make 
them serve as a screen, from behind which reinforce- 
ments, ammunition, and water can be safely passed to 
the men in the trenches. 

Of all these obstacles the men of Lord Methuen's 
flying column made light, by sheer valour — by a brav- 
ery which other soldiers may match, but which no men 
on earth can possibly excel. These British officers and 
" Tommies " have a quality of courage that passes my 
understanding, and baffles all calculation when I con- 
sider the return it makes for the cost it entails. At 
Belmont and Graspan the troops stalked up kopjes 
against almost literal ropes of bullets. The more ex- 
perienced were placed five paces apart, and most of 
them escaped, but the naval brigade and the Grenadier 
Guards, who lacked either proper orders or experience, 
marched along almost shoulder to shoulder, seeing their 
comrades drop like autumn leaves in a gale, but still 
plodding on, until the Boers must have imagined them 
demons, so that, with terror at their heartstrings, they 
turned and fled from both battlefields. The naval 
force lost almost 50 per cent, of their number. Thus 
Methuen's men marched on, hungry, tired, thirsty, 
losing a battalion out of ten, but rushing at the foe three 
times in one week, though his haunt each time was a 
volcano's crater spewing lead. At Maaghersfontein the 
very men who lost the battle were those whose bravery 



THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR ii 

had earned them more celebrity than any troops in the 
British army — the Highlanders. 

The rest of the army thanked God that the mishap 
had befallen those whose glorious records for valour 
left them best able of all who served the Queen to 
afford one such rebuff. 

With all these natural advantages of position at his 
disposal, of what sort is the Boer himself in character 
and conduct ? You must never think of him as a 
farmer, which he is not — any more than is any young 
Englishman or American who is ranching in the Bad 
Lands. The Boer is a cattle-herder, but this is so new 
a vocation of his that we must consider him as, first of 
all, a hunter. He was nothing else three or four 
decades ago — and more recently in some parts of his 
countries. He clings to his sporting-rifle to-day, and 
he longs to be a hunter solely, as his father was. 

"The Boers have the great defect of all amateur 
soldiers," wrote George W. Steevens from the Natal 
side early in the war : " they love their ease, and do 
not mean to be killed." The Boer is an amateur sol- 
dier ; but then, again, he is a natural soldier, and of his 
kind the best natural soldier in the world. He does 
not mean to be killed. He stays in battle as long as 
he can inflict harm, and then removes to a stronger 
position, previously agreed upon, as soon as the tide 
turns and he begins to receive damage. He did not 
follow these tactics at Paardeberg, but this was owing 



12 THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 

to the stupidity of Cronje, who could not be made to 
believe that he was surrounded, and continued to wait 
for the frontal attack, which he had good reason to 
believe was the only mode of assault known to the 
British. 

The Boer may love his ease, but he has most heroic- 
ally restrained himself from, taking it. In European 
military parlance he is a mounted infantry-man, and 
the Hghtest-riding, most mobile, that we know among 
civilised or semi-civilised peoples. In this war some 
of the same leaders and commandoes have frequently 
crossed and recrossed the Free State, now fighting 
Buller in Natal, now engaging French at Rensburg, 
and even combating or threatening Methuen at Mod- 
der and Maaghersfontein. This rapid work must have 
been done with only biltong in the saddle-bags, and with 
no transport. But that is not the Boer's favourite or 
characteristic mode of soldiering. He usually has a 
considerable transport near by, in which is carried not 
only plenty of good and varied fare, but often his 
women as well. It is not wise to believe anything a 
Boer says under any circumstances, for the Spartans 
never can have reduced theft to such a science as these 
singular people have developed the practice of lying, 
and yet I have heard this statement as to their com- 
forts in such ways and with such details that I am 
inclined to think there is some basis for it. 

The Boers seem not to know or to value the truth, 



THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 13 

for they lie to one another, are lied to by their leaders, 
and are surfeited with lies by their newspaper organs. 
It is a condition so extraordinary that I cannot com- 
prehend it, though every one in South Africa knows 
it to be true. I have seen the files of a Boer news- 
paper dating from the beginning of the war, and every 
battle report ended with " our loss was two killed and 
fifteen wounded," or *' one killed, while the English 
dead covered the field." Kimberley's relief, Cronje's 
surrender, Ladysmith's freedom, were all denied, and at 
the same time the commandants told their fighting-men 
that Russia and England were at war, that Russia had 
seized a large part of India, and that 15,000 Russian 
troops had landed in Natal. 

Since it is certain that "truth will prevail," and every 
lie about the war has to be retracted more or less 
quickly, I cannot understand the minds which at one 
and the same time indulge the practice and are duped 
by it. What this leads to is evident in the fighting habits 
of the Boer, so that these rem.arks are not of the nature 
of a digression. It leads to British soldiers being in- 
vited into a Dutch garden to help themselves to fruit, 
and then being shot at by Boers hiding in the garden. 
It leads to such incidents as that at Jacobsdal, where 
every garden wall vomited shot, and yet where, when 
the town was taken, the men came out — very many 
with Red Cross badges on their arms — to welcome our 
soldiers and tell them how glad they were that the 



14 THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 

British were coming to give them good rule and 
honest rulers. It leads to an instance the exact oppo- 
site of that, in which, at a village near Ladybrand, 
Colonel Broadwood and his men, while scattering 
Lord Roberts's proclamation, were entertained at tea 
in the best houses, and were told that all the people 
were glad the British had come. Within the half-hour 
that the little band of British enjoyed the hospitality 
of the place, a galloper came in to warn Broadwood 
that several thousands of Boers were approaching. The 
colonel and his men leaped upon their horses and made 
a hasty escape, but, as they fled, from the windows and 
the garden walls the Boers who had welcomed them 
fusilladed them with rifle-fire. Both this practical form 
of deception and actual lying are included in the defi- 
nition of the Boer word " slim." To be ^' slim " is the 
aim of every man of that much mixed blood. They 
openly boast of and glory in it. In a dictionary the 
word would stand thus : — 

Slim — Cunning, tricky, able to get the better of all with whom one 
has to do. 

I have called the Boer a great natural soldier, but I 
suspect that what he is as a soldier is merely what he 
first became as a hunter. All his attributes are those 
of the clever stalker of wild and savage game. One trait 
that belongs to the born hunter he has lost — at least he 
has lost it in warfare — that is, his marksmanship. Con- 
sidering the vast stores of cartridges he has burned in 



THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 15; 

this war, and taking into weighty account the fact 
that the British have always been the attacking party, 
usually approaching him in full view, it is amazing 
how small a percentage of men the British have lost. 
One of the universally circulated bits of knowledge of 
the Boer that has had to be unlearned is this, for at 
the outset the most that was urged in his behalf as a 
warrior was that he was an excellent marksman. He 
does shoot straight, but the modern magazine-rifle 
destroys marksmanship while the marksman uses it. 
When an enemy is approaching, and you can shoot at 
him as often as you can move your right forefinger, 
you are apt, if not certain, to prefer throwing a hail of 
shot rather than to take time for deliberate aim. It is 
simpler, easier, and more satisfactory to send a mass of 
lead into a mass of men— particularly when they are 
Britishers rushing toward you as if their khaki uniform 
covered bodies of tempered steel. 

The inspection of half a dozen battle-fields immedi- 
ately after their desertion by the Boers seems to show 
that the Boers may be classed under three groups, the 
Transvaaler, the Free Stater, and the wretchedly poor 
soldier— the last being common to both countries. It 
is a queer way to study people, but I began my studies 
among dead Boers, and, in a measure, have continued 
them with the same material. To describe the three 
sorts of Boers with a wide brush and a few strokes, as 
a cartoonist would, I should say that I pick out the 



i6 THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 

Transvaaler as the sturdy, tall, lithe, young man in 
homespun, or the burly, heavily-bearded elder in the 
same dress ; both rude, not caring for clothes except as 
covering, not trim, yet not very unkempt ; always vig- 
orous, powerful, thick-necked, and stubborn-jawed. I 
decide those to be Free Staters who are of finer mould, 
softer skin, better dress, who even in death carry an 
atmosphere that connects them with the British colo- 
nists who are their neighbours. One notices a hint of 
ornament, the path of the razor, the signs of toll taken 
by the scissors from the hair and beard. Orice I even 
saw a pair of gloved dead hands — the only gloves Fve 
ever seen worn by " Brother Boer." And then there 
are the dreadful-looking poor. Brutish they look when 
one sees them marching to prison, with cunning little 
eyes set only a finger-breadth apart, as baboons' eyes 
are put, with long, matted beards and knotted hair. 
The memory of some of these whom I have seen dead 
will cling to me till I follow them. 

At first I thought that these dreadful-looking poorer 
Boers were servants or ranch-hands. I have not yet 
quite cleared this up, but I am told that they more 
nearly correspond to the poor whites of the Southern 
States of America than to any other people. They 
may work on the ranches kraaling and feeding the cattle 
and horses, and doing the chores ; or they may be simply 
squatters who have settled upon a ranch, built them- 
selves a hutch-like sort of cabin, and never been dis- 



THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 17 

turbed by the ranch-owner. For I am told that always, 
when misfortune overwhelms a typical Boer of the gen- 
uine stripe, he gives up ambition, but clings to his rifle 
and to the land he once owned, upon which he squats 
and remains undisturbed. The existence of this class 
completes and perfects the resemblance which I early 
noticed between the Boers of the two republics and the 
mountain folk in West Virginia. Whenever I have 
seen a throng of Boers my mind has gone back to 
memorable days spent in the Blue Ridge mountains a 
few years ago, and to a village festival which brought 
together the people of the valleys and hills from far 
and near. The Boers are heavier men, and in advanced 
years grow portly, but otherwise the type is much the 
same, and I should say that the social and intellectual 
grade is nearly identical in the two regions. Both 
races are bearded, and wear the same sort of rough- 
and-ready shop-made clothes ; both live out-door lives 
on the backs of horses ; both keep their rifles handy, 
in simple homes which are arranged and appointed in 
surprisingly similar style. 

Some of the well-to-do Free State Boers used to 
drive to battle in their Cape carts, a luxurious practice 
of which I never heard anywhere else, and which 
wholly justifies the late Mr. Steevens's happy designa- 
tion of them as " amateur soldiers." When they had 
slain as many British as they thought possible, and the 
tide of victory was setting against them, they rolled 



i8 THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 

back to their ranches in their comfortable carts (for a 
Cape cart is a very roomy, heavy, two-wheeled carriage 
of somewhat the pattern of an old-time chaise or gig), 
or, more often, upon the fleet spare horse which they 
had led behind them in the morning. I saw this at 
Belmont and at Graspan ; and there, also, I first saw the 
wolfish, tangle-bearded, wretchedly poor dead whom I 
have described. I inferred, from their being the only 
dead on the kopjes, that the poor wretches, whose sur- 
roundings showed that they had lived and slept in their 
rocky crannies for weeks, were labourers, and had been 
commanded to stay there, to continue a hopeless 
fight, and to mask the retreat of the others. 

I know better now, and what I have learned reveals 
one of the most peculiar habits of the Boer in battle. 
They were left lying dead where they were killed be- 
cause they were poor, and because they had no rela- 
tives in the commando, at least none who was able to 
carry their bodies away. Understand that the British 
find very few dead on the field, even after the hottest bat- 
tle. This is because a Boer who dies in battle falls among 
his people and they carry his body away. He has his 
brothers, sons, uncles, or cousins fighting by his side, 
and it is as if he fell on his own ranch. Immediately 
one of his relations takes away the body. The bodies 
that are left — and none are left unless the field is va- 
cated by sudden flight — are the always-despised foreign- 
ers, and those who have no kin at hand to care for them. 



THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 19 

From a kopje on one of Methuen's battle-fields 
we saw the dead being thrown over the saddles of the 
living, and one officer declared that he saw a dead Boer 
lifted upon his horse and held there by another man, 
who rode away holding up the .corpse with one hand. 
At Maaghersfontein a friendly woman who lived on the 
veldt behind the Boer position declared that the dead 
were carried past her house all day during the long and 
bitter fight. On that battle-ground I found many new 
graves, into which, without doubt, the despised Hol- 
landers, French, Germans, and Scandinavians were 
tumbled hastily ; while others were sunk in the Riet 
River, which joins the Modderat that battlefield. One 
gathers from the systematic deception practised by 
their leaders upon the Boers with regard to their losses 
in battle, that this instant removal of the dead by vari- 
ous means is intended to deceive their own soldiers, 
quite as much as to conceal the truth from the British. 

I speak of the Boer's disrespect for foreigners in his 
own ranks because so many facts attest it. The Scan- 
dinavians who were captured at Maaghersfontein told 
us they had never been kindly treated by the Boers. 
An American who is a burgher and fought against the 
British told me that the Boer distrusts every foreigner, 
including the Hollander. Another burgher, in a Boer 
home and surrounded by a Boer family, assured 
me that Albrecht was the only foreigner whom the 
Boers respected. Him they trusted because he had 



20 THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 

lived so long with them — yet his speech was always 
half Taal and half German. Poor gallant Villebois, 
who, though misguided, was sincere, suffered continual 
rudeness at the hands of his comrades. When, at Ja- 
cobsdal, he warned Cronje that he was being flanked by 
the British, the obstinate old fighting rancher replied, 
" The British will never leave the railway." And when 
Villebois persisted, the half-savage Cronje said to him 
in coarse language, what can be clumsily refined in this 
sentence : '' Shut up ! I was a soldier when you were a 
baby." Subsequently the grim old guerilla is said to 
have torn up Villebois's plan for the recapture of Kim- 
berley after the paper had been approved by the 
Kriegsraad. 

To return now to the war itself, we have seen that 
the first halt all along the line was apparently 
without a break to let in the light of hope. Field- 
Marshal Lord Roberts soon ended that crisis, and 
set every one of four armies in motion. He darted 
from Modder Station to take in Kimberley with 
one arm and to encircle Cronje's force with the 
other, though the Boer force melted down, by night 
escapes, to one-half its original size before it sur- 
rendered. Then the magician '' Bobs," as the soldiers 
love to call him ( " the Little Man " is the affectionate 
phrase of the officers), pushed on to Bloemfontein, 
fighting practically all the way, and winning every- 
where. 



THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 21 

The stay-at-home critics do not know how many 
British horses died on the last march, or how fagged 
were those that survived ; not every one remembers 
what a large amount of stores and waggons the army 
lost at Waterfall Drift, or how difficult it was to get 
more waggons, nor could those at a distance see the 
veldt which lay all around us — a new veldt to us ; no 
longer baked and swept by " dust devils," but a spongy, 
stodgy bog of a veldt, drenched by daily torrents. 
Lord Roberts's horses would not last four days at 
pulling a convoy through that mud. 

Furthermore, the 7,000 Boers who incautiously went 
south of Bloemfontein a week after the capital was 
taken had to be surrounded and sent to St. Helena if 
possible before the army started, for then, as Lord 
Roberts said, " there will be so many the less to get in 
front of us." No one questions or doubts " Bobs " in 
the British army. His place is unique there — and in 
all the world besides. 

In all the world no other hero has the unshaken con- 
fidence, affection, and praise of so many men. It is 
not merely the private soldier who is wholly satisfied 
simply to be led by him. The feeling is the same 
among the officers. He has infinite tact because he is 
in complete sympathy with every man in or above the 
ranks. He returns every salute ; he talks to every sort 
of soldier ; he knows them by name by the hundred. 
He is more profuse in kind words and compliments 



22 THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 

than in reproof, just as he is most inclined to be gentle 
and kindly, yet every man knows how firm and severe 
he can be. In those two sentences lies the definition 
of perfect justice, which he nearly personifies. He 
makes so little show and parade that there is no plainer 
man among his 200,000 ; and yet he is always as neat 
as a pin ; a straight-built, solidly set up, quick, nervous 
little man, with bright eyes under a majestic forehead 
and above a masterful chin. His face is so sad and 
gentle when it is in repose that you have to look at it 
again and again — and then only to add to your wonder 
how that can be the visage of a man who deals death 
for a profession, and leads to death the flower of the 
army he loves. Look at the same face again when he 
is speaking, giving orders. It is just as kindly, but the 
melancholy has fled, and in its place is the indefinable 
tracery called " command." 

At Dreefontein he came out to where the naval bat- 
tery was, and sat down on a camp-stool brought for 
him by his Indian attendant. He spoke to the officer 
in command of the battery cheerily, and now and then 
he asked the younger officers a question. All the time 
he was smiling and looking most pleased, though, for 
its size, there has not been a hotter battle in the war. 
Gallopers and staff-officers came and went, bringing 
news and taking away orders. " Tell Colonel So-and- 
so to move a little forward, and to the left." " Say 
that I wish So-and-so would push forward." It was all 



THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 23 

as quietly and calmly said and done, there in the heat 
of battle and within range of the enemy's guns — as 
calmly and quietly done as ever a bank-manager issued 
orders to his clerks on a dull afternoon. And, just as 
suddenly as he came, the Field-Marshal sprang up and 
walked away, with the Indian attendant and the chair 
at his heels. 

He trusts every one implicitly until he finds himself 
mistaken in any man, then it is not comfortable to be 
in that man's shoes. He is never angry. He controls 
his temper as he does his appetite, for he never smokes, 
and drinks hardly at all. He lives, in war, as plainly as 
any colonel under him, to say the least. Beyond and 
behind and above all else that distinguishes him is this : 
that though he is a general among men, he counts him- 
self, before God, a humble soldier, for, without ever in- 
truding the fact, he is a devout Christian. 

I think that Lord Methuen is another really religious 
man. I am quite sure he is a very good man, and as 
high a type of the courteous and polished gentleman 
as the army contains. Next to that — and, some may 
say, above it — he is distinguished for a degree of 
bravery which leads one to imagine that he would fight 
a lion with a pocket-knife rather than show the animal 
his back. I used to think, when I was attached to his 
command, that he was braver than a general ought to 
show himself, so often did he risk being killed or 
wounded, even on days of rest, when he persisted in 



24 THE TEUTON TUG OF WAR 

going to the outposts to study his and the enemy's 
position. At Modder River he made at least two at 
tempts to lead his men across the stream under heavy 
fire, and there, you remember, he was wounded. 

It is impossible here to describe the characteristics 
of all the British leaders. Really there was but one 
leader as soon as " Little Bobs " came out. Even a 
name which once filled the world was then eclipsed 
by his, for he alone commanded — and absolutely. 



CHAPTER II 

AN INVISIBLE ENEMY 

It has been shown that the chief obstacle to a quick 
success of the British arms in South Africa in 1899- 
1900 was not the enemy but his country, which is the 
most easily defended, most naturally and plentifully 
fortified land on earth ; offering a fort and sometimes 
many forts or breastworks or dongahs in almost every 
square mile — in every few miles certainly. The Boers, 
possessing this natural advantage, made the best of it 
by seldom offering to attack, but hiding behind these 
ready-made positions of defence, and forcing the British 
to attack them— always in and from the open. I have 
already attempted to show that their land was a more 
effectual opponent to the British army than all their 
men and arms and marksmanship. 

It would be difficult to exaggerate the defensive 
value of the fortress-like kopjes, and rock-strewn 
ground, and dry river-beds, combined with the trying 
character of the climate and the scarcity of water — 
both terrible hindrances to the British rather than to 
the Boers, who were used to meeting these conditions ; 

25 



26 AN INVISIBLE ENEMY 

but the most formidable, awesome, soul-and-mind- 
straining feature of the war was the enemy's invisibil- 
ity. Some one else should attempt to do justice to 
this — some one with greater skill at word-painting, with 
a richer gift of illustration and genius for choosing 
similes ; some one, if such there be, who unites the 
poetic with the practical, and who could render the 
emotions of the souls and minds of the English sol- 
diery, while picturing the outward features of the 
weird, one-sided fields of combat. 

I saw many men all but crazed by their inability to 
discern the Boers who were pelting them with lead — 
made mad by the inequality and unfairness of the fight- 
ing, stirred to rush like maniacs or devils straight at 
the hidden enemy, regardless of death, and bent only 
upon forcing their assailants out from cover. I saw 
one man — too imaginative to endure the unending ten- 
sion of this uncanny relation between himself and the 
Boers — who was wrecked physically after his nervous 
system had already broken down. *' Give a man a rifle 
in battle, and his nervousness will disappear," is an old 
saying, but he altered it to " give me a sight of a Boer 
to shoot at, or I shall go mad ! " 

Fancy, if you can, what it must have meant to an 
army to go on and on fighting nothing — nothing visible, 
nothing substantial, nothing to aim at — and yet a noth- 
ing that spat Mauser balls, a nothing that slew with 
explosive bullets, and shrapnel, and common shell ! 



AN INVISIBLE ENEMY 27 

Fancy the feelings of the 8,ocmd men of Methuen's 
force lying for twelve hours under a galling, deadly fire 
at Modder River, and never seeing a Boer or knowing 
where the Boers were ! It was as if they were always 
shooting over the curve of the earth. 

We shudder at the awful trap and surprise set for 
the Highlanders when, at Maaghersfontein, the black 
darkness of the last minutes of a stormy night vomited 
death messengers which slew them as the sickle slays 
grass ; but, after all, this was but a slight exaggeration 
of the usual conditions of all the battles on the veldt. 
There was daylight in other engagements, but it very 
seldom exposed the enemy — the stealthy hunter who 
went to war upon his human foes precisely as he and 
his ancestors had for centuries preyed upon the wild 
game of that land. 

When, therefore, we compare such warfare with 
fighting a vapour or an essence, the comparison is a 
just one. But for the fact that the bullets sang as 
mosquitoes do in their flight, death came as if from 
the glances of eyes which were hid in invisible bodies. 
It was as if the soldiers were slain by some material- 
ised portion of the light of the sun, which permeates 
the atmosphere and is not distinguishable from it. 
Suddenly, as the armies marched upon a prairie on 
which a tiny deer could be detected miles away, there 
came the ominous crackle as of frying fat, the faint 
high-keyed song of the bullets and — the tumbling of 



28 AN INVISIBLE ENEMY 

the dead and wounded. Thus a battle began. The 
British lay as flat upon mother earth as they could 
stretch themselves, and fired — what at ? At some 
bushes, at some rocks, at a ridge of ground, at what- 
ever seemed a likely lurking place for an enemy, which 
might have been recruited from the gnomes or the 
shades of the dead — which might have been composed 
of the rays of Rontgen light, or the bodiless, unseen 
currents of the wireless telegraph. 

** Who is this riding toward us — a Boer?" ^' If you 
can see him, he is no Boer," was sure to be the reply 
of any man with our army. " Spare the solitary horse- 
man on the skyline. He is bound to be a Britisher," 
are words which Rudyard Kipling wrote among his 
" Kopje-book maxims " in The Friend^ a newspaper 
which we shall presently describe. 

Just before one battle the British saw a band of 
Boers who showed themselves on the veldt as a decoy 
— and, because they saw them, they would not believe 
that they were Boers. They fought, as a rule, behind 
the rocks on the veldt, behind the rocks on the kopjes, 
in little one-man fortresses of stone, in indistinguishable 
trenches in the grassland, in nullahs, spruits, and river- 
beds, and behind garden walls. When they ran they 
descended the farther sides of the hills, or they slipped 
into the great rifts in the earth which abound on the 
veldt, and which swallowed them out of sight, and gave 
them invisibility for miles. 



AN INVISIBLE ENEMY 29 

This was the chief and most awful peculiarity of that 
war. The British dealt with a demonish, unsubstantial 
enemy. They shot without targets, while exposing 
themselves in the boldest bulk and outline always. 
They were slain by men they could not see, firing bul- 
lets whose source they could only guess at roughly. 
The summons to nearly every battle was a volley as 
unexpected and mysterious as if the air had exploded 
in front and shot its hardened particles into the ranks. 
It was all too uncanny. It worked upon the nerves. 
It kept the men under such a strain as no armies have 
ever suffered elsewhere or before. 

It may console the British to know that they have 
had an experience and training which leaves the rest of 
the armies of Europe green and ignorant beside them. 
It may give them rightful pride to think that they 
have endured what no other fighting men have known. 
But it was an awful, straining, cruel, and demonish 
thing — this fighting the air, this shooting at nothing — • 
this being killed by those who would not let you see 
where or how to drive death back upon them. 



CHAPTER III 

THE VELDT AND ITS PEOPLE 

The surface of the veldt where the British fought 
under Methuen is a thousand miles of baked earth pro- 
fusely littered with stones. Hills are flung all over it 
as if it had once boiled and these were the bubbles. 
These hills, called kopjes (copies) are from loo to 
1,000 feet high, and some are all speckled with sage 
brush, while others are mere heaps of boulders. 
Everything is khaki-coloured except the rocks, which 
are usually black. River-beds as dry as a bone in a fur- 
nace are very plentiful, and so are other smaller gut- 
ters, called " sluits," where water flows in the rainy 
season. Water, the scarcest thing on the veldt, is a 
terrible scourge there — a cruel, destructive force. 
When it is present, it is so abundant as to be useless 
and unmanageable ; and then it tears and rends its way, 
like a thing possessed of devils, into the sea, and is 
gone. 

A large part of this strange tract is called the Karroo 
Desert, and is inhabited by very few persons except 
the Kaffirs in their round huts of bent saplings covered 
30 



THE VELDT AND ITS PEOPLE 31 

with matting. These appear to be usually near the 
railway, and the men and women are seen to wear 
clothing as a homage to the white men, which is not 
paid where the negroes live in numbers by themselves. 
A bead-worked belt around the loins, and a very much 
abbreviated beginning of a breech-clout suffice to meet 
their own ideas of comfort and modesty. It was not 
so very long ago that in every well-to-do Boer house a 
perfectly nude Kaffir handmaiden of from fifteen to 
twenty-five years came into the sits kammer, or sitting- 
room to wash the feet of the men just before bedtime. 
She brought a basin, soap, and towel, and attended to 
the eldest guest first, then to the next in age, and so on 
to the family. To-day the custom is dead and the 
handmaiden is clothed cap-a-pie. 

Once in a great while on the veldt you see some trees, 
three or four times, it may be, during a day's ride. 
When a long, thin line of greenery comes within sight, 
you know that you are approaching a wet river, for 
there are few rivers like the Orange, M odder, and Riet, 
which always keeps a little water in them, except in the 
rainy season, when they overflow their banks, and 
race along like mountain torrents. Like the Missis- 
sippi, Missouri, and Ohio, they carry chocolate-coloured 
water, which is not any the less wholesome for drinking 
though it is mere mud in solution. If you see but a 
bunch or short line of trees, you know you are 
approaching a Boer farmhouse. There is always water 



32 THE VELDT AND ITS PEOPLE 

near such a homestead, which accounts for the trees ; 
these are, usually, three or four poplars in front of the 
house, and a cloud of foliage nearby where there is an 
enclosure of fig, mulberry, and peach trees, and a patch 
of " mealies," or Indian corn, raised from American 
seed. The water is generally what is called a dam, 
but that word in Africa really means a stone-walled 
reservoir, or a natural depression in the earth which 
catches and stores water during the heavy rains. 

From a distance I do not know of any dwelling more 
attractive and inviting than a Boer house ; this is be- 
cause the veldt is so hot and brown and naked that 
the sieht of a white homestead set about with trees 
makes the heart leap and the pulses beat, just as a sim- 
ilar sight does in Turkey, Persia, or Arabia, and for the 
same reason. These Boer houses, made of sun-dried 
brick and whitened over outside, are very Asiatic-look- 
ing. I am back in the far East every time I see one. 
But don't expect too much of them or you will be 
cruelly disappointed. They prove to be mere oblong 
boxes punctured for doors and windows. They con- 
tain an ample kitchen, a family sleeping-room, and a 
sitting-room. The more modern ones now contain ex- 
tra sleeping-rooms for the grown-up children, but in 
the older houses and among the old-fashioned Boers 
there is but one sleeping-room for the family, whose 
members sleep in their trousers or petticoats, according 
to their sex. 



THE VELDT AND ITS PEOPLE 33 

For literature, the Boer has, first and mainly, his 
Bible, and next, a lot of patent medicine almanacs, ob- 
tained, like his pictures, free at the nearest winkle or 
store. If he is very progressive, he may take a Dutch 
newspaper. What that means you may judge when I 
tell you that I have a friend who spent six months in 
travel in the Transvaal, and at the end of that time 
read an allusion to the siege of Paris. The Franco- 
Prussian war was at an end, and he had never seen any 
other mention of it. 

They are up by daybreak, and the man is out on 
horseback superintending the turning out of his cattle. 
Bedtime comes soon after sundown, when supper is 
finished, a chapter of the Bible has been read, and all 
have knelt in prayer; for the Boer is a strange anomaly 
— a pious creature who gets his inspiration from the 
Old Testament rather than from the New, and who 
does with as little morality as is possible. He reserves 
the time immediately after prayers for retailing to his 
frau all his sharp practices of the day ; for to get the 
best of a man in trade, by no matter what trickery, is 
the proudest achievement of the burgher. ** Fear God, 
honour your parents, keep out of debt, and cheat the 
English," has been the warning drilled into every Boer 
boy's head during the last hundred years. 

They are of a very much-mixed blood, and the infu- 
sion of the negro has strangely overcome the love of 
cleanliness and tidiness which was so strong in the 



34 THE VELDT AND ITS PEOPLE 

original pure Dutch stock. It has also obliterated the 
HoUandish taste for gardening and love of flowers. 
Short of a darkey cabin in the Southern States, I have 
never seen such slatternly surroundings as those of the 
Boer homes that I had visited — nine in all when this 
was written — in one prosperous section of the Free 
State. No house has one of those retiring places 
which we would imagine could not be dispensed with. 
But these are trifles, like the fact that the Boers get 
along without stockings or socks. 

They are called "farmers" and their countries are 
spoken of as " the farmer republics," but they are sim- 
ply cattle-breeders, and their farms are really cattle 
ranges. A farm among the Boers is an immense tract 
— 16,000 acres as a rule, I believe, though many men 
own many farms of that size. A whole valley, or even 
two great connected valleys, will often constitute a 
farm, every foot of which is the simple, unaltered veldt, 
except the little barbed-wire enclosure containing the 
fruit trees and the patch of corn. I speak now of 
what I have seen. I am told that in richer, better- 
watered districts some acres of corn are regularly 
planted by the farmers ; enough for their own use, not 
for market. 

The frequent ant-hills are most curious, round-topped 
mounds of brick-red earth, which, every here and there, 
pimple the parched prairie. They look like so many 
big red balls cut in half and strewn over the veldt. 



THE VELDT AND ITS PEOPLE 35 

The ants build these hillocks or domes, which average 
two to three feet in height and the same width at the 
bottom. They are made of the soil, which the ants 
have rid of its sand, and they are cellular or honey- 
combed inside. The action of rain and dew gives 
them an almost shell-like outer surface. You may stand 
upon them, and thousands of British soldiers have lain 
behind them in battle, imagining that they afford 
protection from bullets, but they have no solidity. 
The wheel of a light waggon will cut through them as 
if they were made of green cheese. They are of inter- 
est in that they reveal one of the strange and subtle 
ways of nature. The ants bring up this best part of 
the earth, and when they have built their houses of it, 
the ant-bears come at night and tear them to bits, so 
that the winds and water may scatter the material over 
the sandy surface of the veldt. 

The ants appear to me no different from those we 
have at home, but the ant-bear is a strange beast indeed. 
He is, when full-grown, about three feet long and nearly 
as tall, and it is said that his fore-legs are the most 
powerful limbs, in proportion to his size, which are 
possessed by any creature now existing. His method 
is to use his front paws to rend an ant-hill open. This 
done, he lies down and pushes in among its cells a long, 
sticky tongue — a yard or more of it ; a tongue which 
has the chameleon's power of changing its colour to 
match whatever it rests upon. The mucilaginous stuff 



36 THE VELDT AND ITS PEOPLE 

on its surface is considered delicious by the ants, who 
crowd upon the member and stick there. When his 
tongue is encrusted with these insects, the creature 
draws it into his mouth and swallows its living freight. 
Pie is a formidable-looking animal, but never attacks 
mankind. 

The veldt abounds with animals and birds, and it is 
a strange thing that we see them in the greatest num- 
ber during a battle. At such a time the ant-bears and 
the myriad meer-cats, which are a sort of squirrel, hide 
in their holes in the ground ; but the several varieties 
of small deer, the partridges, pheasants, and huge bus- 
tards, and vultures called aasvogels find themselves 
driven into the open centre of each battlefield between 
the opposing armies. I do not think a battle was 
fought under Methuen during which I have not seen 
droves of steenbok (a deer the size of a half-grown kid) 
rushing wildly at and through our lines. Snakes, 
scorpions, tarantulas, and great repulsive spiders are so 
common that I have killed five scorpions in my tent in 
a single morning — so common as to keep us all and 
always on our guard when we are lying down. They 
are all venomous, but I do not think they are nearly as 
likely to kill with their bites and stings as those similar 
insects and reptiles that are found in the East and 
West Indies, and elsewhere. 

The most extraordinary characteristic of this country 
is the weather. There is more weather, and there are 



THE VELDT AND ITS PEOPLE 37 

more kinds of it, than any one would care to remember, 
unless he had to write about it. For instance, it is 
fiendishly hot all day because the veldt is between 
4,000 and 6,000 feet above the sea, and the air is rari- 
fied and the sun blazes right through it. For the same 
reason it grows chilly half an hour after sunset, and 
colder and colder through each hour as the earth throws 
off its heat. By two o'clock in the morning you need 
all the blankets and furs you can heap on you, just as 
at two o'clock in the afternoon you would throw off 
your skin if you could. The saving thing about both 
extremes of weather is that the climate is dry, for dry- 
ness always modifies the effect of both heat and cold. 
At times we had rain every day or two, always in the 
afternoon, and nature goes at the job of making rain as 
if it was a very difficult and complicated operation. 
She does not float a few dark bags of water overhead, 
and then empty them out on the earth, as is her usual 
method. Not at all. What she does is to begin get- 
ting up a " Dust Devil," the most horrid, maddening, 
and outrageous form of persecution that I have ever 
suffered. As you sit looking over the veldt early of an 
afternoon, you suddenly see a little corkscrew-shaped 
column of dust whirling in front of you. It is so small 
that you could put a barrel over it when it begins. I 
wonder no one has ever thought of doing this. But it 
whirls and grows, and grows and whirls, until the first 
thing you know it is as big as a tent, and something 



38 THE VELDT AND ITS PEOPLE 

near the same shape, except that the point at the top 
may reach straight up in a long brown thread sixty or 
eighty feet high. Well, it whirls and grows, and grows 
and whirls, until it is half an acre in size and has begun 
to pick up big planks, and men's coats, and hats, and 
heavy waterproof waggon covers, and to fling them 
around in its outermost circle. At last, when it has 
become a full-grown devil, it turns right about and 
makes for the camp. Every one, except the sentries, 
rushes for shelter and all find that shelter from such a 
demon is unavailing. It squeezes its dust under tents, 
into windows, through crannies and cracks, between the 
doors and their frames. It sifts through outer clothes 
and under clothes, and paints every man's skin khaki- 
coloured. It forces its way under the lids of the cook- 
ing pots, aye, it drives itself into the watch in your 
pocket and clogs its wheels. In five minutes it has 
gone, and then — we have an hour of dust-storm which 
is the same thing, except that it drives straight ahead 
and does not whirl around. 

Then come the thunder and lightning — real able- 
bodied thunder and lightning — the " pucker " thing, 
as they say in India, or " number one proper," as it 
would be called in China. I hope the wicked will ex- 
perience nothing worse hereafter. Crash ! comes the 
thunder, and always on the same instant as a flash comes 
which seems to singe your eyeballs. Very soon the 
heavens open, and the rain comes down in torrents, 



THE VELDT AND ITS PEOPLE 39 

with more thunder and lightning to punctuate the 
showers. It rains in such an enthusiastic, high-spirited, 
wholesale fashion that each storm puts the rivers 
in flood. Whenever we saw the shallow stream, the 
Modder, suddenly choking with liquified mud, rush- 
ing along at twelve miles an hour, and playing 
havoc with ferries and pontoons, we knew that there 
had been a deluge somewhere in the Free State. 

In the morning the weather is staid and calm. It is 
just red-hot under a blazing sun, but otherwise orderly 
and respectable. That is when the locusts prefer to 
make their excursions. They, also, are khaki-coloured, 
like everything else, and they come at the rate of 
11,897,652,423 per second. They make nature look 
as if an unprecedented storm of brown snow was rag- 
ing. The mere flutter of their wings — the hum of their 
flying — makes a noise like the sound of a distant 
waterfall. They obscure the sky, they keep dropping 
on the earth to rest, until it is carpeted with their 
bodies. They hold a mortgage on creation while they 
are passing along. 



CHAPTER IV 

A DAY OF MODERN WAR 

It is only half-past four o'clock in the morning when 
we are drinking our cocoa and munching our biscuits. 
We have been roused two hours earlier than this 
when going to battle, which we do not expect now, 
for Spytfontein, where the Boers are supposed to be, is 
fifteen miles away, and eleven miles is the longest 
march we have yet taken in a day. 

Already the sun is beginning to exert the scorching 

strength it possesses in summer time on the veldt. It 

has risen, and has become a fire in the east. Tommy 

Atkins, always buttoned to the throat, bandaged to 

the insteps, and coated to the wrists, is beginning 

to strap himself up in the harness of a horse — of a 

cart-horse, mind you, not the far lighter trappings of a 

carriage-horse. Over his shoulders and down his breast, 

across his back and around his waist, he is fitting — 

always with the help of a comrade — the complexity of 

quarter-inch straps and quarter-pound buckles which 

he must wear because Wellington's soldiers wore them. 

Upon this brutal harness hang the cartridge-pouches, 
40 



A DAY OF MODERN WAR 41 

water-bottle, haversack, bayonet sheath, and in some 
cases the shovels which heavy-laden fighting men must 
carry. Except that one knew that soldiers can get 
used to anything — even death — one never could com- 
prehend how they survived such a rig in such a 
climate. 

It was quite an object lesson in accoutrements when 
there came to this same army certain Australians, and 
New Zealanders, and men of Canada called Strathcona's 
Horse, who did their share with the regulars, and yet 
were costumed as sensibly as so many cowboys, in 
light wide hats, with bandoliers at angles for their car- 
tridges — free and easy, supple and ready for every- 
thing. Such was the gear of Rimington's Tigers or 
*^ Night Cats." And the days were to come when we 
were to see hundreds of men at work in fixed camps in 
their shirt-sleeves ; aye, and one of us was to have a 
British colonel say to him, " how good the boys feel at 
being able to shed their coats ! Why on earth could 
they not have fought their battles so, as the Americans 
did in Cuba? What damned nonsense old countries 
do perpetrate ! " 

It must have been half-past five o'clock when we 
began the forward march in a very wide mass, though 
only one battalion deep, except where the convoy 
trailed after the Lancers or the Guards on the right, 
and the Field and Horse Artillery bumped their guns 
behind us of the Ninth Brigade in the centre and left. 



42 A DAY OF MODERN WAR 

It was a beautiful sight to see ; the long, thin, skirmish- 
line ahead, and half a mile back the General and his 
staff ; then the battalions in quarter-column formation, 
each led by its colonel and one or two of his officers. 
Every man was in khaki, and the cannons were coloured 
like the men. At dusk you could not have seen us a 
quarter of a mile away, and now in broad day I doubt if 
any of us were visible — except the Lancers, who had not 
then learned to paint or sheathe their glancing lance- 
points — anything like a mile off. 

Everybody swung along as if on parade, the officers 
keeping their horses at a walk and looking idly to the 
right and left, the men striding sturdily with chins up, 
but chaffing and sending repartee to and fro, in low 
voices, as shuttles are sent across a steam loom. The 
transport came along soberly and quietly almost for 
the first time in South African warfare. The way ahead 
was over slightly rising ground, uplifted at the distant 
river and sloping down to us, but it appeared to be 
level. 

Say what you will and think what you may of the 
Intelligence Department and the scouts, it is neverthe- 
less true that the army did not know they were going 
into battle. While they loafed a day by the muddy 
pan behind they were told that a few Boers — about 
three hundred — were entrenched before a little village 
a few miles ahead. They also heard that the Mounted 
Infantry would be able to do for them, and that the 



A DAY OF MODERN WAR 43 

army would find no Boers there when it came to the 
place. Presently they halted. 

The army halted a long time — more than half an 
hour — and then again trudged ahead. Two war cor- 
respondents were riding well forward when they sud- 
denly realised that a small dark patch far ahead and on 
the right of the field was composed of horsemen. Spur- 
ring their horses and taking out their field-glasses they 
advanced until their view was better still. They saw 
that the horsemen — from three hundred to five hundred 
in number — were obviously bent upon attracting atten- 
tion. They broke up into several bands which dashed 
about to the right and left only to close together again 
and ride away slowly in one body. The glasses of the 
correspondents showed that these were men in motley 
garb, clothed in suits of many cuts and colours, as 
would be the case if they were the peasantry or farmers 
of any countryside. They were Boers. It was difficult 
to realise, for the Boers had never shown themselves to 
us, and these men were not only revealing themselves, 
but in an unmistakably impudent manner. The cor- 
respondents rode back and met a colonel and a scout 
riding at the head of a battalion. " Those are Boers," 
said the correspondents. The self-confident colonel 
replied that they could not be Boers. The correspond- 
ents insisted, saying that they had seen them to be 
Boers. The colonel appealed to the scout who rode 
beside him. " There are not so many Boers within a 



44 A DAY OF MODERN WAR 

dozen miles," said the scout ; " I have been all over 
that region only yesterday. The Boers are waiting for 
us at Spytfontein behind the Maaghersfontein hills 
yonder. The men you saw are our Mounted Infantry." 

It is impossible to say how such a recital affects the 
non-military reader, but to the soldiers, who marched 
and fought and waged a war amid the fog and uncer- 
tainty of such conditions, the strain of the situation 
became almost unbearable. 

The correspondents saw the Boers put spurs to their 
horses, saw the Mounted Infantry appear behind in 
quick pursuit, saw the Ninth Lancers and a Field Bat- 
tery follow. They, too, forged after the others, leav- 
ing the army of infantry still parading along, but 
presently finding themselves in the heat of the battle 
of Modder River. 

It was here, for the first time in the experience of the 
armies operating on the western side of the continent, 
that the Boers left their kopjes and took to trenches in 
the veldt — amazed and alarmed by the truly awesome 
courage of the British in rushing up the steep hills 
against sheets of bullets, undismayed and undeterred 
by whatever toll death collected from their ranks. One 
who has watched them through seven months of the 
war feels the right to declare with confidence that the 
Boers have no courage of the sort we Anglo-Saxons 
know and exercise. Moreover, they detest it in others. 
Every foreigner in the Boer forces who has discussed 



A DAY OF MODERN WAR 45 

the matter has said that he found his usefulness to them 
crippled because the Boers would never attack, never 
expose themselves in the open, would only fight lying 
down and hidden behind something. Most, if not all, 
foreigners who allied themselves with the Boers have 
had a disagreeable experience, because these people 
distrust all strangers, resent their offers of advice, and 
are rendered highly uncomfortable by the extraordinary 
and, in their eyes, mad tendency of all other white 
men to risk their skins and lives unnecessarily in battle. 
Albrecht, as we have seen, was so well known that he 
was allowed to advise, command, and lead a commando 
of the Boer forces. But even he used to risk his unique 
place among them by deliberately standing up in battle. 
The British fought for nearly twelve hours in baking 
heat, and with never a sight of the enemy after that 
first impudent appearance of the few on horseback in 
the early morning — at least with never a sight of them 
except at a little point on the extreme left, where, as 
Colonel Barter led a band of his Yorkshires and some 
Lancashire and Argyle men across the Modder, a few 
Boers were seen clambering over the walls of some gar- 
dens and kraals to leap upon their horses and be gone. 
One longs for the art of a Hugo to paint in all its weird 
and uncanny lights and phases the sensations of an 
army which fights an unseen foe during an entire day, 
feeling its ranks decimated by missiles that come from 
no one knows where, and which men of more imagina- 



46 A DAY OF MODERN WAR 

tion than the rank and file possess might fancy to be 
an essence or deadly vapour in the atmosphere. We 
saw the rude line of trees and bushes which skirted the 
river, and from its neighbourhood we knew that the 
sound of the enemy's rifles proceeded ; but the very 
great majority of us did not know, even at the close of 
the fight, on which side of the water the enemy was 
entrenched. 

That sound of the rifle fire ! It was not only the 
fiercest, most multitudinous volleying that, in all prob- 
ability, had ever been heard upon this earth, but it was 
so long maintained — during so many hours — that the 
mere strain of having to listen to it, and of hearing the 
equally continuous whistlings of innumerable bullets, 
became to some of us well-nigh unendurable. It has 
been roughly estimated that something like a million 
and a half of cartridges were used jointly by the two 
armies ; and yet comparatively few men were killed and 
wounded. In that battle we had it forced upon us to 
conclude either that the latter-day Boer is not a good 
marksman, or that the modern magazine-rifle is de- 
structive of good marksmanship. We fancy that the 
English private is a better shot, and certainly he has 
had some, but not nearly enough, drilling in the use of 
the new weapon at target practice, just as the Boer had 
in the handling of the sporting-rifle in days that are 
gone. But in this way the Boer, slapping in his " clip " 
of cartridges, and having only to move a finger a few 



A DAY OF MODERN WAR 47 

times in order to empty his piece, assuredly shoots 
wildly in the ranks, and leaves most of the damage to 
be done by his sharpshooters, who pot at individuals 
and are condemnedly clever at it. 

In some way, more by the nature of circumstances 
than by any quicker mode, that dreadful day came to 
an end at last. Dusk came, a few of the British crossed 
the river and raised a cheer, the Boers fled, and their 
sharpshooters covered their retreat with firing that 
went on until dark. Never was night blacker ! A 
burning house on the northern or Boers' side of the 
river illuminated a tiny bit of the veldt. Elsewhere a 
black blanket covered all nature. All day thousands 
of men had been gnawingly hungry, and thirsty beyond 
the power of description. It is said that when the 
Boers ran away scores, perhaps hundreds, of the Brit- 
ish, who had been lying prone in the sun all day, broke 
for the river and waded in it, scooping up the water in 
helmetfuls for a drink. 

Not many days after this came the terrible surprise 
at Maaghersfontein, which was described in detail in 
my first volume on the war. 



CHAPTER V 

TOLD IN MUSIC BY THE PIPES 

Morning upon morning for weeks the very earliest 
sound upon the veldt was the opening groan of a bag- 
pipe, the reveille of one of the Highland battalions. 

Do you know that first note of the pipe when the 
wind is beginning to rush out of the bag and through 
the " chanter " even before the bag is filled, and when 
the piper is adjusting the bag to his body, and his 
fingers to the stops? 

It is a weird, long-drawn, shapeless note, a nasal 
groan, a chord of agony wrung from the nose of bar- 
baric harmony. It always precedes a tune as the piper 
tries himself and his instrument before launching into 
his flight of melody. Every morning it was that pro- 
testing note of the pipes next door which roused the 
Wessex Fusiliers and me. It was like the snoring 
of the Scotch elder during church service, of which the 
whole congregation complained because it wakened 
them all. 

And yet it was different, for, once the pipes began, 
48 



TOLD IN MUSIC BY THE PIPES 49 

they never had a rest the livelong day and part of the 
night. As far into the night as nine o'clock and later, 
long after the Fusiliers were put to bed by general 
orders, the pipes still wheezed and groaned, or — as a 
Scotchman would say — frolicked with or wept out their 
gay or their plaintive airs. 

The pipes put me through several moods and 
changes of mind in those long weeks of waiting. 

At first, the abundance of their queer music — of 
which I had heard but little up till then — came as a 
novelty. Next, they roused my curiosity as to how a 
piper could have either the will or the strength to 
play for sixteen hours on end without a longer pause 
than the minute it required to change from one tune 
to another. And, next, the unceasing noise annoyed 
until it maddened me, and I cursed the pipes as an 
instrument of torture. The piper walked to and fro, 
the length of the regiment's lines, and, at a distance, 
the air was full of a " ziz-ziz-ziz," like the note of a 
demon bee, while the nearer it came the more its nasal 
chords mastered the neighbourhood, and quivered in 
my very bones. 

At the last (I cannot tell why or how it came about) 
I grew to like the sound, and to miss the melody when 
the piper was afar, and only the buzzing came to my 
ears. When he was near he played upon my body and 
my senses. My pen raced with the purple music of 
the reels, my blood warmed under the defiant, chal* 



50 TOLD IN MUSIC BY THE PIPES 

lenging, scarlet chords of the battle songs ; a pleasant 
sadness possessed me when the tunes were plaintive 
and grey. 

Without a drop of Scotch blood in me, I yet began 
to love the Scotch, and to take interest in all that I 
could see and learn of them. With nothing to connect 
me with their land — except that my father once at- 
tended a course of medical lectures in Edinburgh — I 
yet could feel the pipes move me and my heart go out 
toward their players. 

In time I used to leave my camp and cross the nar- 
row lane to the canvas village of the Highlanders, in 
order to watch a piper at his work. 

And lo ! I discovered that instead of one man being 
the sole piper, a score of men shared his work. These 
stood in line silently listening and watching as the 
musician of the moment strode jauntily up and down, 
giving to his hips that swaggering, boastful, swaying 
movement which your true master of the bag and 
reeds never fails to practise. They looked at him for 
hours, now hungrily, now gloatingly, as he stepped to 
and fro, just touching his toes to the veldt like a man 
practising to walk on eggs — like one whose body is 
lifted with his soul by the music he creates. For hours, 
I say, but in every hour at least two different men 
were the players. Those who watched were waiting 
their turns, and ever and anon the player of the mo- 
ment halted, the flying ribbons fell beside the 



TOLD IN MUSIC BY THE PIPES cr 

" drones," and the pipe was passed to another man in 
the patient line. 

Then off strode the fresh player with the streamers 
floating from his pipes, with his hips swaying, his head 
held high, and his toes but touching the earth. Once 
I heard a man say, " gi' me the pipes, Sandy ; I can 
tell ye what naebody has said " — at least, those were 
the strange words I thought that I distinguished. 

What I was certain of was that I had discovered 
why it seemed that the regimental piper played steadily 
for sixteen hours a day. 

I learned that there are other things about the Scotch 
which marked them apart from the English. For 
instance, their regimental discipline has not yet trans- 
formed the Scotch " T. Atkins " to an automaton. 
He thinks undisciplined thoughts, and then speaks 
them aloud, for one thing. Strong traces of a feudal 
relationship between the officers and men lead them to 
speak to each other with some freedom — and even to 
converse. And on St. Andrew's Day, I am told, the 
men go the round of their officers' tents, visiting, to 
remind them of the hallowed day, and to be asked to 
drink in honour of it. 

I even heard of the men of one Highland regiment 
calling upon an officer whom they detested, rather 
than mar the custom or lose a drink. " Good evening 
to you. Captain MacTavish," said the spokesman of 
one convivial band, '* we maun tell ye that nane o' us 



52 TOLD IN MUSIC BY THE PIPES 

like ye— in fact, ye're detested by nearly every one, for 
ye're unco hard — and ye're a dour man — but we'll tak 
a wee bit drink wi' you — on account o* the day." 

But all this is a digression. We were dealing with 
the pipes. 

I fell to studying the Scotsmen and their music after 
a battle in which the Highlanders had met with a 
great calamity. For weeks they were low-spirited and 
unsocial, even with one another. Such is their tem- 
perament — a brave and gay one, but with a substratum 
of melancholy which will, at times, come uppermost. 

" I should not like to crack a joke at our mess," said 
to me at this time an officer of theirs who was not 
wholly Scotch. " It would sound profane, and my 
fellow-officers would surely think me mad or idiotic. I 
suggested champagne the other night at dinner, and 
I'll not do that again until we get back our spirits. 
The men are in the same mood as the officers. It is 
the pipes that make them so. The pipes are keeping 
them a great deal resentful, and still more melancholy." 

" The pipes ? " I echoed, inquiringly. " What have 
the pipes to do with their feelings ? " 

" Eh, man ? Don't you know that the pipes can 
talk as good Scotch as any man who hears them? 
Surely *tis so— and 'tis what the pipes are saying, first 
in one player's hands and then in another's, that keeps 
the men from forgetting their part in the last battle." 

Later, as the days passed, when I saw this officer 



TOLD IN MUSIC BY THE PIPES 53 

again at leisure, I went to him for an explanation of 
his surprising disclosure. I had been trying to learn 
the language of the pipes in the meantime, but I ac- 
quired no more understanding than a dog has of 
English when he distinguishes between a kindly human 
tone and a cross one. I could tell when a tune was 
martial and when another was mournful. When a gay 
one rang out — if any had — I would not have mistaken 
it for a dirge. To some this may seem a very little 
learning, but I had begun by thinking all the tunes 
alike. 

" Yesterday," said my friend the officer, '^ we'd a 
little match between men who had some skill at em- 
broidering the airs of the old ballads with trills of the 
grace-notes that they call ' warblers,' but this contest 
was broken up by a rugged son of the hills who, after 
asking for the pipes, flung from them a few strong, 
clear notes which gained the attention of all who are 
born to a knowledge of the music that speaks. I am 
not one of those, but I called my soldier-servant up 
and asked him what was being played. ' Well, sir,' 
said he, * that's MacCallum — a great museecian he is. 
And hark, sir ; he has the right of it, and boldly he is 
telling every one his thoughts. He says that every 
man kens that the grand general who's dead was as 
cunning and skilfu' in war as ony man above him, and 
'tis late in the day — now that he's laid away and dumb 
— ^to put blame on him as if he were an ignoramus and 



54 TOLD IN MUSIC BY THE PIPES 

a butcher, like some others. And now — oh ! brawly 
ye're tellin' it, McCallum — he says there may be 
scheming and plotting in high places, but no skull- 
duggery o' any sort, however it is gilded, will ever 
deceive ane single true chiel o' the Highlands as to the 
rights and the wrongs of the battle in which our chief- 
tain fell/ " 

*' And then," said my gossip, *' the pipes passed to 
the hand of another man, and my servant — seeing me 
about to move away — touched my arm and bade me 
wait, as this new player was another adept with the 
pipes. * He's grand, at it,' said he ; ' well done, 
Stewart ! * He's saying, sir, that the reason none will 
heed those who blame our grand leader that's gone is 
that there's men of rank among us — and of proud 
blood — that'll stand up to any man at home and swear 
that when our fallen chief came back with his orders 
for the battle he complained of them sorely, but he 
said, ' no better could he get,' and when he lay down 
in his blanket his head was full of the trouble that was 
coming on him — he not being able to learn what he 
needed to know against the morrow.' " 

There was more of this recital of what the pipes had 
spoken to the regiment, but it would only be irritating 
a sore to repeat it. The pipers spoke even more plain- 
ly as the bold outpourings of one incited bolder from 
another, until there were suggestions, by pipes grown 
mutinous, of sentiments which, happily, have seldom 



TOLD IN MUSIC BY THE PIPES 55 

been spread within the British Army. But what I have 
told suffices to illustrate my sole point, which is that 
the gift of eloquent speech in chords and trills is born 
with the master-pipers. 

I never saw my officer-friend again for more than a 
nod or a word in passing. But on one day the pipes 
next door rang jubilantly, and man after man applied 
himself to them with ginger in his touch. Each blew 
triumphant, thrilling, heart-stirring chords, and every 
piper swaggered at his work with such a will as to send 
his aproned kilt to and fro with what seemed a double 
swing to each beat of the time. 

I said to myself, " They have learned that Hector 
Macdonald is coming to be their new brigadier, and the 
pipes are assuring them that every Highlander may be 
himself again, certain of victory and new glory under a 
leader second only to the one they have lost." I still 
believe my conjecture was right. 

And I know from living next door, as it were, that 
the cloud of gloom that had hung over the brigade was 
dispelled almost with the suddenness of its horrid 
appearance. 

After that the ''kilties " began to make in this war a 
continuation of their glorious record in the past. 



CHAPTER VI 

OFFICERS AND ARISTOCRATS 

They are good fellows, the British officers, though 
a great many appear to try to make you think they are 
not when first they land in Africa. There is a type — 
a class of them — that stalk ashore with single eye- 
glasses and a haw-hawty manner, who are, I confess, as 
disagreeable to those who do not know them as any 
men on earth except their cousins in the Prussian army. 
But with the British it is all a very thin veneer or wash, 
and it begins to rub off more and more quickly the 
nearer they get to the front. 

At Capetown, if you address such a man he will say, 
with great fatigue in his voice : " Aw, who are you ? " — • 
a question, and a way of putting it, that makes you fancy 
you may not be anybody after all. At Capetown, you see, 
the officer is by himself, feeling his own importance, and 
full of lofty ideas of what he is going to do. You 
meet him next at Orange River, five hundred miles 
nearer the front. He is in khaki serge now. He looks 
like everyone else, and he feels it. He has become a 
little cog in a big wheel, and he feels that. Again he 

56 



OFFICERS AND ARISTOCRATS 5; 

sees you. " Oh, hello ! " he says ; " you here ? Going 
to the front ? D — n it, I wish I was." Finally you 
see him at the front. He has become two legs of a 
thing that goes on 400,000 feet. He has been starved, 
parched, frozen, baked, shot at with bullets coming in 
ropes. He is dirty, soiled, and grown automatic. But 
he messes with twenty hearty, devil-may-care, good 
fellows with not a trace of airs in any one of them. 
" Hello," he says this time ; " glad to see you. I say, 
we've got some whiskey — at least my chum Bagley has 
some. Come and have a tot, old chap." Seasoned 
and cured, already ; all the electroplating rubbed off — 
just the plain honest brick left. 

My son Lester has told me of a little incident which 
I missed seeing, and which illustrates the fact that not 
all these men lose their single eyeglasses or their other 
eccentricities even after they have become thoroughly 
good fellows. It was at the battle of Dreefontein. 
Several officers were under a shower of bullets that 
came like water shot out of a needle bath. All were 
pressing their bodies down as if they would have liked 
to push themselves into, instead of on, the earth. 
Suddenly, one very tall fellow began to rise up. He 
got on his knees first, and then he straightened up on 
his feet to his full stature and stood in that spray of 
lead — the only target on the field. He fumbled for 
his eyeglass, found it, contorted his cheek as a man 
does to fit such an ornament into his face, and then 



58 OFFICERS AND ARISTOCRATS 

drawled out : " Aw, I say, I wondah where these bul- 
lets are coming from ? " He continued to stand and 
stare at the kopje where the Boers lay, and presently 
he drawled again, while the air was tattered with shot 
and buzzing with their noise , " aw, I say, can any of 
you fellahs see where they come from ? " The other 
" fellahs " squirmed and wriggled as if they were going 
to get up and help him look, but not one raised his 
head or his body an inch. " Get down, Reggie, you 
silly fool ! " said one. ** You're doing what the Boers 
want — and that isn't playing the game." At that, 
Reggie adjusted his glass anew and, after having one 
more long and hard stare in the direction of the in- 
visible enemy, slowly returned to embrace his mother 
earth. 

War is almost as thorough a leveller as death. We 
had so many princes, dukes, and lords out in South 
Africa that it seemed as if the dear American girls who 
came to London would find the display of nobility very 
thin, and London very commonplace. The coroneted 
crowd was all in khaki, and they fared with the rest 
on absolutely equal terms. The wealthiest duke in 
England was to be seen running about the camp in the 
rain trying to borrow a waterproof sheet, and when he 
reached Bloemfontein he presided over the little book 
in which all visitors to Lord Roberts were asked to 
sign their names. Once at dinner a friend brought an- 
other friend and mumbled his name so that none of us 



OFFICERS AND ARISTOCRATS 59 

caught it. We all went over to one of our bedrooms 
afterwards and had whiskey and soda. Half-way into 
the night I discovered that our guest was a prince, but 
one member of the group did not find it out until he 
had gone. In the regimental messes the lords were 
called " Eddie " and " Arthur," or whatever their given 
names may be, by their brothers in arms ; and '' Agin- 
court " or " Wycombe," or whatever their titles are, by 
those who do not know them quite so well. Nothing 
sounded stranger than to hear a soldier-servant or an 
outsider saying, " Thank you, me lord," and '* Yes, your 
lordship." I should think noblemen must have tired 
of it to the point of loathing. In speaking about titles, 
one of them dropped this remark the other day : " A 
chap gets a baronetcy, and for a week he is very pleased 
to hear everybody calling him " Sir Geoffrey " ; but in 
the second week he gets d — d tired of it, and in the same 
length of time he discovers that the most substantial 
result of his preferment is that he has to pay twice as 
much for everything he buys as he paid before. The 
doctors who have come out here, and are all going to 
get knighthoods and baronetcies, are the only ones to 
be envied. They will jump their price for a visit up 
from two or five guineas to twenty-five guineas, 
because, you know, you can't offer a man with a title 
less than twenty-five guineas for looking at your tongue 
— you really can't, you know." 

But if the men called each other '* Eddie " and 



6o OFFICERS AND ARISTOCRATS 

" Arthur," do not for a moment imagine that the noble- 
women did the same. There came out to us some of 
these distinguished charmers, and such a mouthing of 
titles as they gave us I never heard in my life before. 
" I asked Lord Welby to take me to see Lord Roberts, 
but he was ordered off, and so I asked Lord Finchley 
Bagham, who was taking Lady Frederick, and I went 
with them." It struck me that the sex which is ever 
loyal to etiquette, decorum, religion, and all the senti- 
mental adjuncts of life, is equally resolved that aristoc- 
racy shall have its due from her. 

Assuredly the British officer is a rattling good fellow, 
be he lord or commoner, duke or '* ranker." When I 
first came out here, and was making a difficult and 
much obstructed way to the scene of war, I had some 
adventures so insulting to common manhood, and so 
nauseating to self-respect, that I thought I should have 
to turn tail and go home. But it was only from 
bureaucratic snobs that this befell me. With the army 
in the field I have not yet found any but good fellows 
— sterling, manly chaps, whose reckless bravery is the 
thing I most criticise about them. And, Lord love us! 
what a hard time they've been having ! When I passed 
through the camps of the Grenadier, Scots, and Cold- 
stream Guards the other day, I thought I never saw 
men more wretchedly and pitifully circumstanced. The 
officers are the ** drawing-room pets " of London 
society, which in a large measure they rule ; for if they 



OFFICERS AND ARISTOCRATS 6i 

attend Lady So-and-so's ball, and are absent from the 
rich Mrs. Tiptoe's reception, the Lord pity Mrs. Tiptoe 
and her chances of " getting on." Well, there they 
were on the veldt, looking like a lot of half-drowned 
rats — and there they had been ever since the cold sea- 
son and the rains had set in. You would not like to 
see a vagabond dog fare as they were doing. They had 
no tents. They could get no dry wood to make fires 
with. They were soaked to the bone night and day, 
and they stood about in mud toe-deep. Titled and 
untitled alike, all were in the same scrape, and all were 
stoutly insisting that it didn't matter ; it was all in the 
game. 



CHAPTER VII 

RESCUE OF THE QUEEN OF DIAMONDS 

I KNOW now just what occurred when the Beautiful 
Youth kissed the sleeping Princess and woke her and 
all the people in the Palace who had gone to sleep, 
years and years before, in the middle of a Virginia 
reel. 

Said the Princess, " Beautiful Youth, please fetch me 
my pony." 

Said he, " Dear Princess, the cooks are preparing 
him to make soup for the servants — the|*e being no 
other meat in the place." 

Said the Queen-Mother, *' Maid, I must have a new 
pair of stockings." 

Said the Maid, " We ain't had any stockings here 
since we went to sleep last century. The ants has ate 
'em all up, mum." 

I came to know these interesting details, which are 

not in the fairy histories, when I was in the palace of 

the Empress Kimberley, the Queen of Diamonds who 

was kissed by the Beautiful Youth, General French, 

and woke up after a four months' sleep. It was when 
62 



RESCUE OF THE QUEEN OF DIAMONDS 63 

I came there just as the siege was raised, and when I 
led the vanguard of those who rushed thither. 

'' A whiskey and soda," says I to a myrmidon at the 

club. 

" Ain't had no whiskey for eight weeks," says he. 

" Milk for my coffee," says I. 

" The regulars has the only milk there is," says he, 
"likewise lots of jam — and they won't give it up." 

I finish my meal and buy a cigar. 

*' Give me a match," I says. 

" There's the candle," the merchant of tobacco re- 
marks. " The matches run out in November." 

A city relieved after a siege is a queer place. There 
never were so few horses in the streets of any modern 
town as were to be seen there. The people had eaten 
them ; also the donkeys, which they declared to be far 
preferable to horses and mules, which are stringy and 
dry and tough. 

The dogs consisted of bones and a tongue hanging 
out, and looked like the frames of dogs in process of 
construction. 

The daily newspapers in the club reading-room were 
dated September 22, 21, 20, 19. The magazines were 
those of July and August of the previous year. 

The shops were open, but the clerks had grown to 
be as automatic as the cuckoos in a German clock. 
Instead of saying "Cuckoo! cuckoo ! ! " they kept on 
remarking ''All out, ma'am," "All out, sir," in rqfer. 



64 RESCUE OF THE QUEEN OF DIAMONDS 

ence to whatever was asked for by the occasional cus- 
tomer. 

No water ran in the wash-basins or bath-tubs, no 
electricity sparkled in the street lamps, nothing ap- 
peared to be natural and in working order, except the 
negroes in the streets, and I was told that a troop of 
them was down with the scurvy. 

The Kimberley people did not like me to report 
that the town did not seem to be much damaged by 
the Boer shells, but that is what I thought. 

Here and there you saw a hole through a wall, or 
the end of a building knocked out, but I don't believe 
that more than twenty buildings were seriously dam- 
aged, though thousands of shells fell in the streets. 

During three months and three weeks the people 
went about as usual, growing more and more accus- 
tomed to the smaller shrapnel shells, but during the last 
week, when the Boers began to shoot lOO-pound shells 
at them, the case was different. From Sunday until 
Friday of the last week of the siege the women and 
children sought shelter in the diamond mines. 

What a mockery that seems ! to have endless super- 
abundant wealth under their feet and at their fingers' 
ends, and not be able to buy an hour of peace or safety. 
It was as if Fortunatus found himself and his purse at 
sea in an open row-boat, and offered a million to the 
winds if they would sell him a biscuit. 

It is said that the women came to be frightfully ner- 



RESCUE OF THE QUEEN OF DIAMONDS 65 

vous and unstrung after the big shells began to come, 
at the end of the strain of a third of a year of the siege. 
Any little noise set them trembling, and a sudden jar 
terrified them. Who can wonder at it ? 

The town could have held out another month. 
Weeks before relief came rations became scarce, and it 
was Mr. Rhodes again, who at every juncture had led 
in the works of defence and salvation, who started the 
soup-kitchen, and served out as many as 15,000 pints 
of soup to as many citizens in a single day. 

Of troops the people had their old and dashing, but 
very small, corps of Diamond Field Horse to start with, 
and Colonel Kekewich's 400 Loyal North Lancashire 
men, and some ridiculous little guns to strengthen them. 
There was also the Diamond Fields Battery, with guns 
like those of the regulars. Mr. Rhodes and the leading 
citizens then raised a mounted troop of 800 men, and a 
town guard of 2,700 men. 

An American of great ingenuity made a grand big 
gun at the De Beers works, where the mechanics also 
turned out shells, which, it is said, is an easy thing to 
do. 

What chafed and irritated the resourceful leaders of 
the place was the knowledge that they had begged the 
Imperial authorities to provide them with 2,000 regu- 
lars, and these had been refused. Had they been so 
strengthened, it is truly said that there would have been 
no battle of Maaghersfontein, because the garrison 



66 RESCUE OF THE QUEEN OF DIAMONDS 

could have prevented the Boers from making a stand 
either there or in the suburbs of the Diamond City. 

But they had other and many grievances against the 
miUtary, whom they regarded as hide-bound by rules, 
beset with a professional pride, which brooked no out- 
side assistance and advice, and confirmed in methods 
which did not fit the South African situation. 

The chief spirit of Kimberley ventured to suggest 
that a certain general should avoid and turn the 
Maaghersfontein position, and advance past it to Kim- 
berley on the open level veldt, as French did after- 
wards, but the only satisfaction that came of this was a 
notification that the general did not wish further cor- 
respondence on military matters. Later several of the 
leading citizens wrote this same suggestion to Lord 
Roberts, and received a courteous and gratifying 
answer. 

Many persons in England appear to credit Cecil 
Rhodes with monopolising a grievance against the tiny 
military force which formed a very minor arm of the 
defence of the place. This is not fair to Mr. Rhodes. 
He is very autocratic, though I do not think him jealous 
in the slightest degree. What he complained of was 
also the subject of complaint of every citizen of Kim- 
berley to whom I spoke, and I met all the leading ones 
who outlived the siege. It is a duty to make this clear, 
since In the plain course of my work I disclosed the 
trouble in a report sent from Kimberley. In proof of 



RESCUE OF THE QUEEN OF DIAMONDS ^y 

what I urge as to the general situation I refer the reader 
to a book on the siege written by E. Oliver Ashe, M.D., 
the leading doctor at Kimberley. 

However, all friction had ceased with the raising of 
the siege, and all grievances were relegated to history. 
The handful of regulars, who would have been wholly 
ineffective without the Volunteers of nine times their 
strength, all fought side by side w^ith them, and kept 
the enemy away until relief came. Colonel Kekewich 
has been duly honoured with promotion for his part in 
the plucky defence, and thereafter the people waited to 
hear and see what recognition, honour, and preferment 
were to come to the equally brave and resourceful lead- 
ers of those forces which were not trained or sworn to 
the pursuit of arms, yet took to them upon the noblest, 
and most unselfish impulse of public spirit. 

And they waited also to see and hear what recogni- 
tion was to be the reward of the humane and generous 
gentleman who fed the citizens and built them a great 
gun, who kept high hearts in the bodies of the mass, 
who controlled the blacks, and never wearied in watch- 
fulness and well-doing while the awful strain endured. 

Surely those who fought with brain and heart and 
purse, and those who left their peaceful paths to risk 
their lives for the women and children around them, 
are as worthy of compliment and distinction as any 
whom duty and discipline forced into this service ! 



CHAPTER VIII 

HEROINES OF KIMBERLEY 

So many of the refugees at Capetown were of the 
" most-favoured nation," that they were commonly 
known as " refujews." Here is a good story of a Kim- 
berley refujew who had just returned to his home and 
neighbours in the Diamond capital. 

"Veil," he said, **you had a tough time here, in 
Kimberley, I dink, ain't it ? " 

" Yes, we had an awful time," said his friend, '' espe- 
cially after the hundred-pound shells began flying 
around." 

"Veil," said the refujew, "ve had a derrible time in 
Capetown also. Ve didn't haf no bomb-shells, but de 
cooking at de hotels vos fearful." 

And that brings me once again to the subject of the 
siege of this place and to the fact that I was asked from 
London if I would tell what the women did during that 
fearful ordeal. 

" The women are not getting their share of news of 
particular interest to themselves," said my correspond- 
ent. 
68 



HEROINES OF KIMBERLEY 69 

Ah ! I don't know about that. They are the sisters 
and mothers of the soldier boys, and some of the news 
must have come to the homes of England with more 
interest than anything I can write and a more awful 
shock than the average bursting shell effected here in 
Kimberley. 

The leading surgeon of Kimberley, of whom I have 
already spoken, Dr. E. Oliver Ashe from London, 
allowed me to read his diary of the siege, and from it 
I made a few notes of what the women did. 

The doctor was being urged to publish his diary in 
book form, as he has since done, and I prophesied that 
it would prove both fascinating and valuable in a 
superlative degree. I shall not hurt if I dip a teaspoon 
once into his great bucketful of curious notes and com- 
ments. 

In the first place, the women stayed at hc^me while a 
very great number of the men were in the various Vol- 
unteer forces, manning the forts, living in camps, skir- 
mishing with the enemy — busy at soldiering. They 
were not bombarded as much as the women in the town 
were, but even if they had been it would not have been 
so bad for them, because it takes half the '* cussedness " 
out of danger to be fighting the fellows who are trying 
to kill you. 

When the time comes for making the terms of settle- 
ment with these inhuman Boers, every woman in Eng- 
land must remember why her sisters in Kimberley were 



70 HEROINES OF KIMBERLEY 

in more danger from shells than their husbands. It was 
because the Boers purposely shelled the houses, know- 
ing that only women and children were in them. The 
Boer commandant was quoted in a Free State paper as 
saying that he was '' putting his shells right in the 
middle of the town " on purpose. It was with similar 
Satanic premeditation that the Boers did the same 
thing at Mafeking. 

That was done in defiance of the Geneva Convention, 
but the Boers regarded that agreement as the Tammany 
Hall political thief looked upon the Constitution of 
his State. When he was arranging a job to enrich his 
friends, and some one suggested that he was violating 
the Constitution, he said, " Arrah, phwat is a little 
thing like the Constitution to come between friends?" 

The houses of the town were not especially con- 
structed to resist lOO-pound shells. What sort they 
were may be inferred from this dialogue, which took 
place in one just after the siege was raised. Two 
women were talking, and one proposed something which 
the other considered preposterous. 

" I say ! " she exclaimed, *' do you think I am a sar- 
dine because I live in a tin house ? " 

The houses even of the more solid sort offered such 
slender defence against shells, that hundreds of house- 
holds prepared what were called " splinter proofs " in 
their yards and gardens. These were little chambers or 
caves hollowed out of the earth. Some were as good 



HEROINES OF KIMBERLEY 71 

as brains could devise and money could obtain. They 
were very deep, and were roofed over with gigantic 
beams, steel plates, earth, and then another layer of 
steel and earth or sandbags over all. The one in the 
grounds of the dwelling of Mr. Gardner F. Williams, 
general manager of the De Beers Company, was well 
floored, contained rugs and wall-hangings, was electric- 
ally lighted, and ventilated by electric fans. As the 
ladies of Mr. Williams's family were away, the servants 
benefited by this haven of safety. I have no doubt 
the shelter proof at the Sanatorium, where Mr. Rhodes 
lived was equally well built and appointed, but I do 
not know that he ever made. use of it. 

" There was no question of his courage," says Dr. 
Ashe, who goes on to state that every day the nation- 
maker rode far out on the veldt toward the Boer lines, 
always wearing white flannel trousers, which made him 
as conspicuous as an electric light on a dark night. By 
the way, there were barriers at the ends of most of the 
streets, and there was an order that no one might ride 
past one of these without being searched. Mr. Rhodes 
was stopped one day by a guard, who was determined 
to search him. Mr. Rhodes fumed and raved, but the 
guard was obdurate. Then Mr. Rhodes produced 
written leave to pass without being searched. He had 
only been trying the guard. 

But to return to the shelter-proofs. 

" Ghastly little dog-holes, most of them were," says 



^2 HEROINES OF KIMBERLEY 

Dr. Ashe, in his absorbing diary. They were often 
without ventilation, and were more dangerous than 
even Boer shells. Yet to these ran many women (and 
men, too, you maybe sure) when the shells were flying. 
In these lived many invalids, and children, and nursing 
mothers, and in one a woman stayed from a Wednes- 
day morning until a Friday evening. 

Different women behaved differently. " As a rule, 
we think they showed more pluck than the men," a 
leading citizen said to me. 

Two women were sitting on different stoeps on 
different days. In each case a shell fell near by and 
exploded in the street. One — an Englishwoman — 
looked on rather amused than otherwise, and went out 
and gathered the pieces to give away as mementoes. 
The other — a Dutch woman — died of fright. 

Two KafBr women were walking in the main street 
side by side. A shell came killed one and did not 
touch her companion. 

Dr. Ashe tells of a lady who walked or rode out with 
her husband every day, shells or no shells. Many 
suffered dreadful deaths. Many had amazingly narrow 
escapes, mainly while at their daily work in their 
homes. One young lady hid in a shell-proof pit until it 
was time to dress for dinner, and then went to her 
room and was killed. That is precisely how death 
came to George Labram, the mechanical wizard who 
made a big gun for the town. Another shell fell under 



HEROINES OF KIMBERLEY 73 

a bed on which a baby was sleeping, but it did not 
explode. Another fell under a bed on which lay a 
Hindoo mother with her newly-born child. This shell 
did explode, and set fire to the bed, but mother and 
child escaped injury. 

Again, a shell came to the breakfast-table of the 
family of a Volunteer who was on duty on the town's 
border. It burst and killed a six-year-old child, broke 
the arm and leg of a younger girl, and badly wounded 
the mother. 

What Dr. Ashe calls the most wonderful of the many 
narrow escapes was one which I will narrate in detail, 
because it carries a profound moral with it. It proves 
how far men go out of their way to show themselves 
absurd when they venture to criticise the eccentricities of 
feminine fashion in dress. A lady was lying down, fully 
dressed, on her bed, resting before dinner. A maid came 
in to say that she had found a man with firewood (which 
was very scarce), who wanted a certain sum for a load. 
The lady turned over on her side, to get at the pocket in 
the back of her dress, and just as she rolled away from 
the side of the bed a 100-pound shell came and bored 
its way through the bed in exactly the place where she 
had been lying. It went through the bed and the floor 
and into the foundations of the house without explod- 
ing ; but it would have cut her to pieces had she been 
dressed as men are clad and been able to put her hand 
down at her side and take her purse out of a pocket there 



74 HEROINES OF KIMBERLEY 

Plenty of women, who stood the smaller shelling 
very well, found their nerves at the breaking-point 
when the Boers brought the lOO-pounder to play on 
their homes. That was when, as if by common con- 
sent, the servant-girls used to dive under the beds 
whenever the alarum was sounded to announce the 
coming of " a big one." 

When first the town was put on rations, the tenderly- 
reared women had a sorry time. The business was so 
badly bungled that Indians, negroes, servants, and 
hoodlums all struggled together in the line, and the 
ladies were shouldered out of it. Their husbands were 
away, their servants were not well served, and they 
had to go themselves or be without meat and soup. 
Very many tried to content themselves with that great 
staple of the siege, bread made of wheat and corn-flour, 
and fried in lubricating oil — a pure sweet oil made from 
lard. After a time the system of ration-distribution 
was rearranged : the ladies found their sex and quality 
respected ; and then, as Dr. Ashe says, it became " a 
wonderful sight to see all the great swells of the town " 
— doctors, architects, barristers, professors, wealthy 
merchants, De Beers directors, and the rest — patiently 
taking their places in line to get their daily meat. 

There came a few days, towards the end of the siege, 
when Mr. Rhodes invited all the women and children 
to seek perfect safety in the diamond mines. Imagina- 
tion runs riot at the mere idea of these treasure caverns 



HEROINES OF KIMBERLEY 75 

becoming the familiar haunt and rendezvous of a 
populace. Their thoughts on finding themselves walled 
about with rocks whose contents could purchase prin- 
cipalities and stir the longing of queens — these and the 
emotions of a thousand fair women of modest mould, 
who are of common clay, and yet love diamonds full 
as fondly, are too complex, too intense, too tremendous 
for handling here. But, apart from these suggestions, 
the actual scenes in those subterranean chambers, are 
said by Dr. Ashe to have been too strange ever to be 
forgotten by him. 

To one of these gem-encrusted caverns, hollowed 
deep in the earth's interior, came 1,500 women and 
children; to another came 1,000. Small as were these 
companies, it seemed impossible to move without 
treading on a sleeping child. Rugs, sheets, blankets, 
and mattresses had been brought to the mouths of 
these treasure wombs and lowered into the depths, 
and those who lived in these strange refuges were fed 
as were no people on the earth's surface overhead, for 
the great diamond monopolists produced milk and 
tinned soups and many delicacies for their guests. A 
few wretched men, shaming the honour of their mothers 
and the sex of their fathers, crept into the mines to 
share the safety of the babes and women, but such was 
the silent contempt they inspired that they presently 
fled to the upper air, and none of their kind took their 
detestable places. 



76 HEROINES OF KIMBERLEY 

Many women worked in all the ways that charity, 
humanity, and benevolence suggested, and those who 
formed an organised corps distributed the few delicacies 
obtainable, especially the tinned milk, which was most 
precious, taking care that it went only to the nursing 
mothers, the babies, and the wounded. 

One thinks of all the fair and gentle sisterhood as 
lamenting the carnage and cruelty of war. One is apt 
to forget in war that, after all, a woman contributed to 
the make-up of every warrior. 

I had forgotten this when I said to a gentle Sister in 
the Kimberley Hospital one day, " Does it not amaze 
you that men should butcher and mangle each other 
as these poor chaps in this hospital have been 
mangled ? " 

She hesitated, bit her lip, and then, between set 
teeth, she said : " Only make it possible for me to put 
on men's clothes and carry a rifle, and I would shoot 
the cruel and cowardly Boers as long as I had life and 
strength to pull a trigger." 



CHAPTER IX 

HEROES OF THE SIEGE 

The fact that it was her citizens who defended and 
saved Kimberley put the story of the siege of that town 
in strong contrast with all the other records of this 
war. 

The Imperial troops did their professional duty — 
and in some cases performed it gloriously — but theirs 
was a small part of the defensive force, and their share 
of credit, even when distributed with lavish generosity, 
must be proportionately little. 

The bravest, most active, and broad-minded men of 
her Majesty's own forces, like Colonel Kekewich, 
Lieutenant Mclnnes, Captain O'Brien of the Lanca- 
shires. Major Fraser and others, while regretting that 
the Imperial force was not many times larger, 
were bound to recognise the force and justice of 
the allotment of credit which circumstances com- 
pelled. For my part, taking no side but accepting 
the situation as it was, I set about to discover who 
were the leaders among the citizens, and to make them 
known to all the world. This, fortunately, could be 

77 



78 HEROES OF THE SIEGE 

done without any fear that the leaders of the little Im- 
perial force would miss recognition and reward, since 
the army and the Government had their own well- 
established means for that end. 

The head and heart of the citizen activity was Cecil 
J. Rhodes. It is hopeless to attempt to set down what 
he did. As Captain Tyson said in a speech after the 
town was relieved : " To him we owe everything." 
With the exception of the commanders of the Volun- 
teer forces and the physicians, nearly all the other 
citizens whose claim upon the gratitude of Great 
Britain is here recorded, were Mr. Rhodes's lieutenants. 
Nothing was too big for Mr. Rhodes — he overlooked 
nothing, he failed in nothing. His tremendous force, 
his habit of command, and his huge operations have 
left him impatient of delay and contemptuous of im- 
pediment. Such a leader, suddenly curbed by military 
formula, etiquette, and the limitations of a minor force, 
would be apt to contribute his share of the friction 
which must be generated. It was generated. It 
quickly expended itself. It is a thing which was but 
is not, and which has left behind it no shadow. 

Next in the value of his assistance was George La.- 
bram, chief engineer of the De Beers Company. He 
was killed in warfare during the siege, and his widow 
and very promising little son will be generously cared 
for by the De Beers Company ; but it is said that had 
he lived the Government could hardly have done him 



HEROES OF THE SIEGE 79 

any honour commensurate with his deserts. He was 
the inventive genius of the place and time. To him 
nothing seemed impossible. He it was who made the 
famous Kimberley big gun, and to make it he had to 
devise and make the tools to do the work with. Before 
that he manufactured shells for the cannon of the reg- 
ulars. He built a cold storage apparatus for preserving 
the meat used in the town, and for this end was obliged 
to construct the ice machines— doing it all in nine days. 
He was an American. So marked was his ability and 
so colossal were his services, that the regulars buried 
him — civilian as he was — with full military honours. 

R. H. Henderson, the Mayor, whose term of office 
expired just after the town was relieved, organised the 
relief committees — a great work, as will be seen when 
it is known that beside the 45,000 townsfolk the place 
contained between 2,000 and 3,000 regulars. In many 
other paths he worked with keen enthusiasm in har- 
mony with Mr. Rhodes. 

Mr. Gardner F. Williams, general manager of the 
De Beers mines, and Mr. Rhodes's colleague on the 
board of direction, was a power, and the custodian of 
very great responsibility. He collaborated with Mr. 
Rhodes throughout the siege, was always in sympathy 
with his chief, and knew, to a hair, the capabilities of 
the men and machinery in his charge. He assisted at 
all times and in everything, and never failed to supply 
whatever was needed. He supplied the material, tools, 



8o HEROES OF THE SIEGE 

and will, where Mr. Labram provided the inventive 
genius. Like Labram, Mr. Williams is an American, 
and he also had the genius to make or to plan what- 
ever could not be otherwise obtained. 

Dr. Smart, late Colonial Secretary, happened to be 
visiting Mr. Rhodes when the siege began. Heat once 
interested himself in Mr. Rhodes's manifold activities 
in behalf of the troops and the people. The mere con- 
tagion of his energy worked many others up to a high 
pressure, and from first to last he inspired and encour- 
aged all who assisted or even observed him. He and 
Captain T. G. Tyson ran the soup-kitchen, distributed 
the fruit and vegetables, and he, especially, was con- 
stant in his assistance to Mr. Rhodes. 

Captain Tyson is a dynamo of energy. He has long 
been conspicuous in every public work and institution 
in the town, and as the manager of the very ambitious 
Kimberley Club is one of the best-known and best-liked 
of the citizens. It is said that everybody in South Af- 
rica knows him, and nearly every one calls him by his first 
name. The mere management of the club — as he car- 
ried it on — was a god-send to the scores who lived or 
got their meals there. He inaugurated the famous 
work of distributing soup — a task that sometimes com- 
pelled the giving out of pint rations to sixteen thou- 
sand persons. 

The chef of the club was " commandeered " or '' in- 
spanned "—as the local phrases go— to superintend the 



HEROES OF THE SIEGE 8i 

concoction of the fluid, which insured its being of a 
very high quality. Captain Tyson, himself a soldier 
of twenty-three years' service, and the first colonial 
Volunteer to be presented at Court at home, also 
served as caterer to the local battalion called ** the 
Bufis," but in addition to these routine duties he took 
upon himself the continual task of assisting Mr. Rhodes. 

Colonel D. Harris, M.L.A., V.D., is the man who re- 
turned to Kimberley just before the beginning of the 
siege and gave the necessary impetus for the formation 
of the Town Guard, the largest armed force of the de- 
fence. After the force was organised he commanded 
it, and in such a manner as to win the thanks of the 
High Commissioner. 

Lieutenant-Colonel Peakman, who for dash and 
pluck stands high in the order of merit, is a man of 
wide and lively experience in past colonial wars. He 
succeeded Colonel Scott Turner in command of the 
Kimberley Light Horse, which was raised, equipped, 
and mounted by Mr. Rhodes. Lieutenant-Colonel 
Finlayson, who commanded the Kimberley Brigade 
(Diamond Fields Artillery and Kimberley Regiment), 
performed his duties with single-minded devotion. 

Mr. W. D. Fynn's name can never be left out of the 
list of those to whom the town is most deeply in- 
debted. Whoever had frequent contact with Mr. 
Rhodes found that " Send for Fynn " was the phrase 

most frequently used by the chief. No matter what 
6 



82 HEROES OF THE SIEGE 

was wanted, he sent for Fynn. Mr. Fynn, in peace 
times, was manager of the De Beers farms. He gath- 
ered and selected the horses for the mounted troop, he 
rid the town of its burden of the eight thousand black 
men who were in the mine compounds when the siege 
began. This was as difficult as it was important, because 
the Boers determined that these workmen should re- 
main and eat up the siege supplies. They kept sending 
the blacks back, but Mr. Fynn persisted until he got 
them all to their homes. He organised and managed 
a corps of runners in order to communicate with the 
main army, and he also recruited and managed a corps 
of scouts. He saved all the cattle of the town, often 
at the risk of his life, when the Boers were raiding the 
suburbs, and afterwards he sent out a train of waggons 
full of provisions to the front at the suggestion of the 
incessantly good presiding genius of the place. 

No men " played the game" better than the doctors, 
though the very nature of the work caused them to be 
overlooked where military valour shone so brilliantly. 
Dr. Ashe knew no difference between night and day or 
safety and danger. He was formerly associated with 
Mr. Treves in London, and naturally leads the pro- 
fession here. Drs. Mackenzie, Watkins, Stoney, 
Mathias, and Hebedon, Surgeon-Major Smith and Dr. 
Ortlepp, all did more than their duty. At the hospital 
Drs. Russell and Shields, in organising, attending, and 
operating, nearly worked themselves ill. 



HEROES OF THE SIEGE 83 

These are the men who protected and saved Kimber- 
ley. They wore no braid, and were ignorant of red 
tape, but they possess the deep gratitude of all their 
fellow-citizens. 



CHAPTER X 

BOER BRAVERY AND HONOUR 

In Kimberley, just after General French had set it 
free of Boer environment, the air of every British com- 
munity and household throbbed with the jubilation of 
the moment. 

After five months or more of almost continual check, 
defeat, and slaughter, victories had piled themselves 
upon the British. Kimberley and Ladysmith were 
free, and the cruel Cronje, the chief guerilla opposed to 
them, was in their net. 

They fell to saying that the war would soon be over. 
The hope was parent to the assertion, but it was only 
hope, for they knew little of the Boer. Those who had 
lived longest with him in peace had deceived them the 
most about what sort of man he would prove in war. 
All that had been learned at that time was that he was 
neither brave nor honourable. He is obstinate, crafty, 
semi-savage, clever in gaining and keeping ambush, but 
up to that time he had never shown himself brave. 

As to his honour, I will illustrate his idea of it further 
along by telling a few of his practices. 

A leading member of the Cape Government had 
84 



BOER BRAVERY AND HONOUR 85 

assiduously spread the idea that the Colony would rise 
against the British. He used to predict it every morn- 
ing as a possibility of each day. Finally he spoke of it 
as a last trump card up the sleeve of the Boer. 

He hypnotised some of the Imperial leaders, civil 
and military — which is why correspondents were for- 
bidden to describe what a nest of viperous rebels and 
traitors the Colony was. It is also the reason why even 
the best generals were led to refer publicly to the foe 
as brave and honourable. All the officials from the 
first to the last had been treating the Boers to confec- 
tionery and bouquets in a manner most startling to an 
onlooker, who had supposed that British methods were 
always blunt and straightforward, direct from the 
shoulder, just and sincere. 

This was not a welcome departure, I assure you, to 
the mass of Britons, who asked one another, '* Must we 
always be bewitched when we deal with South African 
problems ? Must we for ever make mistakes ? Could 
there be a more certain mode of earning the contempt 
and continuing the disloyalty of the Dutch-blooded 
people of the Cape than to treat them with a leniency 
and magnanimity which they translate to be the out- 
come of fear ? The Dutchman in the Republics must 
be soundly thrashed. He will understand that and re- 
spect us. The Dutch traitor in the Colony must be 
hanged or shot. That will put the fear of God in his 
neighbours." 



S6 BOER BRAVERY AND HONOUR 

So said all the British in or out of the army — all, 
alas ! except the governing body. 

I was so disturbed by the difference between what I 
saw the Boer to be and what the British commanders 
wished to believe of him that I went beyond my sphere 
as a war correspondent and endeavoured to bring the 
people at home back to a view of the case from its 
roots. 

" First," I said, " I beg you to remember that this is 
not a war waged by England. It is a war steadily and 
stealthily planned by the Queen's Dutch subjects and 
the Dutch Republics for fully twenty years. For be- 
tween four and six years they equipped for it. They 
began purchasing arms and planning defences before 
the Jameson Raid ; let no one fool you with falsehood 
about that. Finally, Kruger begged Steyn to declare 
war three weeks before Steyn consented, then war was 
declared by the Dutch, and hostilities were begun by 
them. 

" Next rid your mind of the notion that it is a war 
against two farmer Republics. 

" There is not a farmer in the two countries, and only 
one (the Free State) was a republic in any true sense. 
These people are herders of cattle, sheep, and goats, 
like the Israelites of old, and the Afridis and Turks and 
Balkan peoples of to-day." 

One day I read, in an article by Mr. H. W. Massing- 
ham, that " the Boers have made South Africa." The 



BOER BRAVERY AND HONOUR 87 

gentle, scholarly journalist took that means of saying 
that he had never been here. The Boer has sat on 
South Africa and smothered it, kept it down, made it 
the most backward of all white men's lands of equal 
white man's tenancy. His so-called " farms " are as 
Nature made them — merely reaches of veldt on which 
his cattle graze. On each one he has put up a home, 
but its surroundings are almost invariably more repel- 
lent and disorderly than any homes I ever saw, except 
the cabins of the freed slaves in the United States. 
Their camps and strongholds from which the British 
have routed them are the filthiest places I have known 
men of any sort to live in, and I have seen Red Indian 
camps, Chinese camps, Turkish camps, and the camps 
of many sorts of black men. It does not excuse the 
Boer to state the simple truth that he lived by hunting 
until twenty-five years ago, and that since then he has 
lived by cattle herding. He has taken a quarter of a 
century to grow a small patch of mealies for his partial 
support, and for variety in food. 

As soon as the Boers deserted the trenches and kopje 
at Maaghersfontein all the British officers who could 
do so hastened to the spot to see what manner of 
fortifications had so successfully withstood their attack. 

What they found was, I suppose, the filthiest place 
in the world. If any place ever was dirtier it was the 
Boer stronghold at Paardeberg Drift, where Lord Rob- 
erts vanquished Cronje — but that pest-hole had not 



88 BOER BRAVERY AND HONOUR 

been created at the time that we went over the veldt to 
have a look at Maaghersfontein. 

The Boers had gone away in such a hurry that they 
had no time to take their belongings with them. Evi- 
dently the order was " every man for himself, and no 
time must be lost." Consequently the position was lit- 
tered with trunks, saddles, tin boxes, bags of mealies, of 
mealie flour, and of rice. Cartridges were as thickly 
strewn as dead leaves in autumn. Blankets and cloth- 
ing were also much in evidence. 

In places the frightened Boers had made an effort to 
hide their leavings by piling them in the trenches and 
then throwing skins or canvas over them, and dirt and 
tree branches on top of all. 

In their trunks were found, usually, only clothing and 
letters. Much that they had been using was of British 
make, largely taken from the British dead, for these 
" simple, pastoral people " stripped and robbed the dead 
after every battle. 

Dozens and dozens of bullock hides were in use there, 
for shelters and for coverings. These had been taken 
fresh from the backs of the cattle, and the sun was 
making them sizzle and bubble, frying the fat and tissue 
on the underside of each, so that they exhaled a nau- 
seating stench. But this formed the least part of the 
effluvium. What caused the greater part I must leave 
to the reader's imagination. A plague of flies helped 
to make the pest-spot still more unendurable. 



BOER BRAVERY AND HONOUR 89 

From every shelter and pole and bush hung strips of 
biltong (jerked beef or venison), for they had not dared 
to stop even long enough to take away this main staff 
of their lives. The drinking water — perhaps even more 
precious since it is more scarce — hung upon the bushes 
as they left it in the drum-shaped wooden casks which 
they sling below their carts and waggons. 

The place was a village of shelters, or, in reality, two 
villages — one upon the rocky kopje, and one by the 
trenches on the veldt. 

On the kopje the habitations were walls of piled-up 
boulders covered with skins or canvas waggon covers. 
They made the hill resemble one of the ruined cities of 
the extinct cliff-dwellers in Arizona. 

On the veldt the shelters were made of upright sticks, 
roofed over with skins, waggon covers, or bush branches. 
To use these branches they had cut their bushes in- 
geniously, taking away only a branch or two from each 
bush, and thus leaving enough for them to hide and 
move behind in battle without being seen. 

Little heaps of bits of exploded lyddite shells in 
many shelters showed that the Boers had been collect- 
ing these as curios to take to their homes, though, as 
it proved, they were glad to be off with only their lives. 

Their trunks were nearly all the cheapest of tin boxes. 
The saddles they abandoned were mainly loot from the 
British troops. All seemed to have had mackintoshes, 
probably the same that the Transvaal Government took 



90 BOER BRAVERY AND HONOUR 

from the Uitlanders' stores in Johannesburg. No one 
has yet found any soap or towels among their leavings. 
They ate and drank from the same sort of enamelled 
iron plates which the men and officers of the British 
army use, but they had brought no knives or forks, 
though many had busied themselves in cutting knives 
and forks out of wood. A great many of these rude, 
home-made table implements were scattered about the 
camp. 

We had supposed that Maaghersfontein kopje was a 
long, high hill sagging into a kloof or depression in the 
centre. It proved so different that we could scarcely 
believe our eyes when we came to it. In fact, it shrank 
lower and lower the nearer we approached it, and it 
proved to be a bunch or huddle of little kopjes and 
shoulders and knobs — a very nasty place, indeed, and 
all intersected with trenches amid its different parts. 
Near the eastern end, where the British attacked it with 
the Highland Brigade, there was but one trench, a rift 
four feet deep, cut out of the white Hmestone and 
banked up a foot and a half in front with the dirt that 
came off the top of the limestone. 

This trench ran, with a few small breaks, all along 
the front of the group of kopjes, and then, at the east- 
ern end, stopped and left a wide opening of level veldt. 
Far back to the north of the kopjes another trench 
began, and reached to the river, then turned and ran 
alongside the Modder for a great distance. This was 



BOER BRAVERY AND HONOUR 91 

v/here the Guards fought all day valiantly, but without 
doing more than hold back the enemy. At the western 
end of the field, by the railway, where the enemy had 
expected us to advance, the trenches were two, three, 
and even four in a row. Moreover, they were dug in 
all directions among the many hillocks and hills, and 
formed what Major Streatfield rightly called a veritable 
" devil's trap." 

We saw very few and faint signs of the lyddite on 
the low ground, but on the hills, where it struck the 
rocks, it had done terrific damage to nature. It split 
up rocks that weighed many tons, shivering huge boul- 
ders as if they had been sliced by a gang of saws. 
Wherever it hit the rocks it stained them pea-green. 

The site of the wonderful disappearing gun, of which 
we had heard so much, proved that only an ordinary 
gun had been there, and that it had stood upon solid 
rock. It had been set up in an impromptu embrasure 
built of loose boulders. The crevices in the walls were 
filled with sand, bags of sand had been put upon the 
walls, and tree branches were so arranged as to hide the 
place from below. 

And now as to their " bravery and honour," I had 
seen and heard sufficient to fill a page of any news- 
paper with accounts of their cowardly and dastardly 
behaviour before I came to Kimberley, but at that 
place I learned that they had been guilty of different 
and original enormities. 



92 BOER BRAVERY AND HONOUR 

Here they killed the wounded and laid their bodies 
in a row after one of the forays out of the town. And 
here they armed many of the blacks to fight against the 
British, showing all the world how scandalously fraud- 
ulent were their exclamations of horror at the idea of 
employing native Indian troops in this war, a step not 
then even discussed. We heard from Natal and from 
Colesberg of their arming their black servants and em- 
ploying them in the war, but this I have merely read 
of — not seen or got at first hand. In Kimberley, how- 
ever, it was positively stated that the Longburgh ne- 
groes sent out of the Diamond Company's compounds 
were impressed into the Boer service, they being blacks 
whom the British had a recent necessity to punish for 
rebellion. 

There had, at this time, hardly been a battle in 
which the Boers had not abused either the white flag, 
the Geneva Cross, or both. 

I think it is safe to say that the fight at Paardeberg 
Drift, where Cronje surrendered, was the only battle 
up to that date in which they had not disgraced them- 
selves in one or other of these ways. At the battle 
before that, Spion Kop in Natal, they loaded their 
Maxims in their ambulances in order to get them safely 
away. This they did at Modder River also. 

At another time when they showed the flag of truce 
an officer said to his men, " The dogs are trying to mur- 
der us by showing a white flag. Lie still, all of you. 



BOER BRAVERY AND HONOUR 93 

Put your helmets on the muzzle-ends of your guns and 
slowly lift them into sight above the rocks." This was 
done, and a volley of rifle bullets greeted what the 
Boers took to be the line of British heads. At Belmont 
a similar white flag ruse succeeded only too well. 

During the siege of Kimberley the devilish trick was 
played upon the town defenders' outposts, and Kim- 
berly is where the Boers shelled the funeral cortege of 
George Labram — who made the big gun for the town 
— at dark, later than they had ever shelled the town 
before. Spion Kop is where they shot a doctor while 
he was bandaging a wounded man. At many places 
they fired on the ambulances. I saw them do it at 
Modder River, and I saw them fire on the stretcher- 
bearers in that battle time and time again. 

There is never an excess of poetry in war, but one 
phase of it that was sentimental, if not poetic, has 
always been the tendency of opposing pickets to estab- 
lish a show of camaraderie. In the fight between the 
North and the South in America the pickets exchanged 
cigars and tobacco, and in that between America and 
Spain last year they conversed together, and exchanged 
gifts. In the war waged by the Boer against the Briton 
the Boer has crept up like a snake in the grass to 
kill the outposts on every field since the war began. 

When the British entered Jacobsdal it looked like a 
city of doctors. Every man in the streets wore a Red 
Cross badge on his arm. These were the men who had 



94 BOEK BRAVERY AND HONOUR 

just been shooting at the British from behind the gar- 
den walls. There was nothing novel or original about 
their seeking the cowardly shelter of a doctor's badge. 
The British were quite accustomed to it. They once 
entered a Boer laager after a victory and found twenty- 
seven of these bogus doctors in it — and seven or eight 
wounded men for their patients. There was also a 
plethora of doctors in the tiny hospital on " the island " 
at Modder River. They had hidden their rifles and 
cartridges under the beds of the patients and put on 
their Red Cross badges as soon as they saw they could 
not get away. 

Again and again mounted soldiers chased Boers in 
the veldt and saw them rush into a house, give their 
arms into safekeeping, and then come out with Red 
Cross bands upon their arms. 

Many times they hid in farmhouses and sent the 
women out to make a pretence of occupation in house- 
hold work, so that the British scouts would ride up 
without suspicion and receive a volley from the farm- 
house windows. 

Their wounded have shot the British soldiers after a 
battle had ended, and when they were offering them 
succour. This is after the pattern of the Dervish, who 
is never a good man till he is dead. At Graspan one 
of the wounded Boers accepted a drink of water from 
a gallant officer, and then killed him as he passed on to 
the next sufferer. 



BOER BRAVERY AND HONOUR 95 

They were not content with looting the houses of 
loyal persons in the British colonies, but in Natal in 
scores of instances they smashed into kindlings and tore 
to ribbons whatever they did not want or could not 
carry off. Worse yet, they fouled the walls of the 
homes of defenceless women with obscene writings. 

They never knew the value of an oath or promise, 
and have not learned it since the war began. I always 
say when the qualities of the Boers are in discussion, 
look at their portraits — at the photographs of such 
leaders as Kruger and De Wet. Then, if you are good 
at reading what God writes upon human faces, there is 
no need to add a word. 



CHAPTER XI 

CRONJE AS A PRISONER 

Unavoidable conditions prevented my being in at 
the death of the military career of the stern guerilla 
chief, Cronje, on Majuba Day. However, I was in 
continual receipt of news from the front, only twenty- 
five miles away. 

The decisive moment of the siege was when Lord 
Roberts's furthermost force planted cannon on the 
kopje to the eastward of the M odder river bed and the 
contiguous trenches in which the ever-cautious Boers 
were hiding. These guns enfiladed the trenches and so 
slaughtered the enemy that they had to surrender. 

When, a day or two before this triumphant move, the 

Modder River rose three feet, it floated many hundreds 

of dead horses and cattle away upon its swift current. 

The British, not realising that the Boer thrives best in 

a stench and amid surroundings of putridity, such as 

he always provides near his homes, were of the opinion 

that this cleansing of the rabbit-holes would prolong 

the siege. But the advantageous placing of the British 

guns in an enfilading position quickly next morning 

brought the Boers to terms. 
96 



CRONJE AS A PRISONER 97 

Cronje is picturesquely described as a thwarted gen- 
eral, but to the wide-awake and well-informed British 
officers, who are not under the severe rod of misguided 
censorship, he presented the appearance of a typical 
squat-figured, black-bearded, neckless Boer. I am sorry 
to say that, because of the previous ill-success of the 
British or because of those politics which beset them 
but do not hinder the Boers in warfare, this bushwhack- 
ing chieftain has been treated as if he were another 
Napoleon. He and his wife were taken in a Cape cart, 
drawn by six artillery horses, to the Modder River a 
few days after his capture. His belongings were in a 
sack. His wife's wardrobe was in a pillowcase, and the 
chief article in Frau Cronje's pillowcase proved to be a 
silk dress commandeered from Lady Sarah Wilson. 

When Cronje reached Modder River he was courte- 
ously asked whether he would have breakfast. He 
grunted, '' No, I have had it." 

Then he was informed that the train to carry him 
to Capetown was to start at three o'clock. 

At this he grunted " Yes." 

His manner was such that he was not pressed into 
further conversation. Nevertheless, he was provided 
with champagne at lunch, while the mounted troop of 
City Imperial Volunteers, who brought him to the 
Modder, were fain to satisfy themselves with recol- 
lections of a recent banquet or two which they had 
enjoyed before leaving London. 



98 CRONJE AS A PRISONER 

What surprised me beyond measure was the unavoid- 
able comparison between this progress of the guerilla 
Cronje through the country, and the manner in which 
Lord Roberts was obliged to make his way through the 
same British colony to the seat of war. Lord Roberts 
was spirited out of Capetown. The train, with a pilot 
engine and thirty soldiers, went out of the station to 
fool the rebels in this English colony into the belief 
that the Field-Marshal was riding in it. Then the 
regular passenger train pulled out and picked up Lord 
Roberts in the suburbs. The British did not dare to 
send their commander-in-chief to the front as even a 
private citizen travels, but loaded with honours their 
enemy, who had plotted for twenty years to take 
England's possessions from her and to drive the Eng- 
lish out of their own colonies into the sea. Let no 
Englishman forget this when the day of settlement 
comes. 

Another correspondent of mine describes Frau, 
Cronje as follows : ^' She is a thin, decrepit old woman, 
and in her rough straw hat and dirty old black dress, 
without cloak or shawl of any sort, presented a hope- 
lessly miserable, draggled, and woebegone appearance." 
She appears to have reassorted her belongings at some 
time during the day, for when she was put on the train 
(an observant officer tells me) she carried Lady Sarah 
Wilson's dress on her arm, and the name of its fashion- 
able maker, " Cooper, Bond Street," which was plainly 



CRONJE AS A PRISONER 99 

legible, became an advertisement which, I fear, was 
wasted upon the " Tommies " and the gaping country 
folk who read it. 

I did not see the old guerilla chief's surrender, but 
I enjoy thinking of the account of it which I have had 
from a naval officer. 

It was 7-30 a.m. when the squat-figured, hard-faced 
old man came up out of the river-bed mounted on a 
ragged white pony. He wore black trousers, a long 
dust-coat over his jacket, and on his head a soft light 
brown hat, with a very broad brim and an extra wide 
band of leather around it. His wife tagged along 
behind him. Both came to Lord Roberts' laager-like 
headquarters, where three chairs had been set out on 
the veldt between three sides of a large hollow square 
made up of the men of the Highland Brigade. Cronje 
sat on one chair, his secretary sat on his right, Lord 
Roberts sat on his left, and an interpreter stood near, 
for the old fellow pretended, as so many Boers do, not 
to be able to speak English. His little eyes, set close 
together in his broad round face, were touched with 
sadness, and a humility which did not match his square 
chin and round cranium. He and Lord Roberts talked 
for nearly fifteen minutes, during which time it is said 
that Cronje strenuously begged that he might not be 
separated from his wife and secretary. Lord Roberts 
asked him what number of men he surrendered, and the 
old guerilla said he had not any idea ; his men had 



lOO CRONJE AS A PRISONER 

been slipping away, through the British lines, in twos 
and threes for a week. Once, when his secretary said 
something which excited him, the old Boer leader 
turned quickly, and shot so angry and fierce a glance 
at the man that all who saw it said under their breaths, 
" Hello ! that's the real Cronje — the Cronje of Bron- 
kerspruit — the man we have an old account with." 

Suddenly Lord Roberts jumped up, bowed, and 
walked away. He did not shake hands with his fallen 
foe. Breakfast was spread for Cronje, Frau Cronje, 
and the secretary upon a table under some trees near 
by. An impulsive officer sent a cigar to the old man. 
He smoked it and then sent his secretary to ask for 
more. 

"Oh, no," said the kindly officer, "let him have a 
pipe and some Boer tobacco if he wants to smoke ; 
that's good enough for him." 

It was a sentiment applauded by all who heard or 
heard of it. 

The only pro-Boer I have ever met in the British 
Army watched the 4,000 and odd prisoners marched 
off to M odder River, all glad to be prisoners, but 
grumbling because they were obliged to walk. He 
came to me afterwards. " I will never defend the 
Boers again," said he. " I am cured. I have seen 
them at last." 

" Well ? " I inquired. 

** They are the worst-looking men I have ever seen. 



CRONJE AS A PRISONER loi 

They are wild-eyed, savage, dull-witted, misshapen. 
Those who show symptoms of a brain appear to be 
unbalanced. If you saw two coming down a road at 
home you would take your washing off the lines. The 
different parts of their bodies do not fit together. 
This one's legs do not match his trunk. The next 
one has a head like a button on the shoulders of an 
ox. A fourth has the long arms of an ourang-outang. 
No sensible person who has seen them could support 
a cause to which such men were joined." 



CHAPTER XII 

FREEING THE FREE STATE 

On March nth, when the head of Roberts's army 
was about thirty miles away, I started from Kimberley 
to overtake it in a Cape cart drawn by six fresh horses, 
and rode no miles before I caught up with the troops. 
Probably in no better way than by that experience can 
the reader be brought to realise how rapidly the army 
— mainly made up of foot-soldiers — was swung into the 
Free State. It is said that in two days the Guards, so 
wrongly thought of as mere pets of London's aristoc- 
racy — made a march unequalled in the records of 
European infantry. 

Paardeberg battlefield, where Cronje surrendered, 
was the worst-looking fighting-ground I had ever seen. 
It looked like a dumping-ground of dead animals, 
wrecked waggons, burned stores, and cast-off human 
accoutrements. It also looked as if a convulsion of 
nature had taken place there, so generally and widely 
was the earth's surface seamed with trenches. These 
trenches were cluttered with everything that the Boers 
brought with them and were obliged to leave behind, 

I02 



FREEING THE FREE STATE 103 

except their rifles, which the conquerors took away 
from them. Trunks, clothing, medicines, horse trap- 
pings, letters, books, ammunition and food boxes, and 
a thousand other things, were strewn in and all around 
these pits. Behind the outside trenches were houses 
that had been blown to ruins, and acres of broken and 
burned carts and waggons. If there ever were days 
when civilised warfare was accompanied by confusion, 
rapine, flame, yells, groans, smoke-clouded fields, 
deafening noise, and all the rest that you see in the 
pictures of Waterloo and Alma, those days are gone. 
In this most modern of all wars order and system have 
prevailed, and men have fought and died under disci- 
pline. Paardeberg field was however an exception, for 
Bedlam appeared to have reigned there, and the old- 
fashioned ideas of the last day and of hell itself seemed 
to have been realised in that encounter. But the fact 
was that the damage to the Boer waggons and houses 
was wreaked bit by bit, slowly, during many days, and 
the litter of the trenches was made only when the fight 
was over, and when first the Boers and then the British 
Tommies ransacked the trunks and boxes to see what 
they wished to carry away. 

For fifty or sixty miles beyond Paardeberg lay the 
bodies of dead and dying horses and oxen being eaten 
by vultures. There were hundreds and hundreds of 
them, abandoned by both Boer and British because 
they were ill, exhausted, or shot. Nothing seen in this 



104 FREEING THE FREE STATE 

war was more pitiful than the fate of these unoffending 
creatures, but one could not honestly blame either side 
for not stopping to put them out of their misery either 
in battle or on a flying march. Vultures were as 
abundant as crows in any field at home, and yet they 
were not plentiful enough to do their scavenger work 
properly. They attacked less than half the dead 
animals, and even upon these they perched glutted, 
heavy, and half asleep. 

My journey proved such a risky one that it was said 
in the army that if I was not shot I must certainly be 
carried off a prisoner to Pretoria — so infested with 
Boers was the country and so wholly unguarded was 
my route. I did not know this on starting, but was 
soon made to realise it. I stopped at some Boer 
houses and took coffee with the women, and many 
Boers rode out and intercepted me to obtain news and 
to ask whether any losses they pretended to have suf- 
fered at the British hands would be made good with 
English money. Being in khaki and in a helmet, I 
was mistaken for a British officer. One Boer said that 
he had picked up two plump English ponies on the 
veldt and he wanted to know what he should do with 
them. " Keep them," said I, " if you don't, some one 
of your neighbours will." " Do you give me permis- 
sion to keep them ? " he asked. '' Yes," I replied, ** I 
give you permission." Thus I made my way half 
across the once happy Free State — now to be happier 



FREEING THE FREE STATE 105 

than ever, but under another name and government. 
At one place I was warned that some kopjes were alive 
with Boers who were sniping any stranger who passed. 
A little further on a Boer rode up and directed me to 
go ahead by the road that hugged those very hills. 
Then he rode on to give notice of my coming. Of 
course I took another route straight across the open 
veldt, where no rock-warming, trench-haunting Boer 
who ever lived would come to molest me. And that 
was the end of that episode. 

" Even the blooming butterflies are the colour of 
khaki," as Tommy Atkins remarked when he saw his 
first swarm of locusts. 

There is an exception to the rule, as was proved by 
the first living thing I saw on that eventful journey. 
It was a secretary bird a yard in height, as heavy as a 
big turkey — a stately bird holding himself proudly and 
stalking along with noble strides as he glanced about 
him for a breakfast of snakes. He was black and 
white. Partridges and many snipe-like birds fluttered 
out of our road, and, presently, I saw ahead of me a 
swarm of vultures soaring in as thick a cloud as if they 
had been moths. As I drew nearer I noticed that the 
bulk of each one's body was very great. On the ground 
— where there were two score waddling about — they 
seemed even larger. They marked the outer edge of 
the great and horrid field of carnage. 

Foul, unsightly, loathesome birds are these. They 



io6 FREEING THE FREE STATE 

were to be my constant companions for three days. I 
was to see hundreds upon hundreds of them, and never 
once, by day, fail to see them. Yet there were not 
enough of them to make away with all the food that 
war had given them. Toward the end of the ride the 
ghoulish birds thinned out, but the dead horses and 
oxen multiplied. 

I am told that a British officer who would not take a 
pin for his own use will steal like an Albanian to feed 
a hungry horse — and all the horses have been hungry 
of late, and many a gentleman has looted forage. It 
must be, then, that the officers feel as I do about this 
slaughter of horses. Between battles a dozen deadly 
forms of disease seize them, and they have to be flung 
aside, and left to die in the dust. And in battle their 
legs are snapped off, their bodies torn, and their heads 
shattered — and there is nothing to do but to leave 
them to the aasvogels, as the vultures are called. 
There is no time, in battle, to put them out of their 
pain. 

Let the anti-cruelty people of England and America 
rave as they may, there are other things to think of be- 
side humanity in the heat of great battles. 

Nothing in my experience compares with the sight 
of the hundreds upon hundreds of dead and dying 
horses on this loomilesof war's promenade. The poor 
beasts had done no man any harm — in fact, each one 
had been a man's reliance— and to see them tattered 



FREEING THE FREE STATE 107 

by shell and then ripped open by vultures, often before 
they were cold in death, was enough to distress the 
most impassive. They had not deserved and they could 
not understand their horrible ill-luck. For some reason 
hundreds had dragged themselves to the main road, 
and then had died either in the track of the waggons 
or by its side. 

But the worst horror was on the last battlefield, only 
twenty-four hours after the fight at Driefontein. On 
this field not nearly all the horses were yet dead, and as 
I came up beside the prostrate body of a beautiful 
steed it would slowly and painfully lift its head and 
turn upon me a pair of the most pleading, woe-stricken 
eyes, full of a hunger to know what I could do for it. 
And all I could do was to drive on, for I had no fire- 
arms even for my own protection deep in an enemy's 
country, where no single armed man had been put to 
guard the route of our supplies and reinforcements. 

My companion, Mr. Samuel J. Pryor, used to turn 
and look back at these dying horses only to find that 
they were still straining their sad eyes after the cart. 
Then he would say, " He is looking at us yet. Oh, it 
makes me ill ! Look ! he is staring at us like a guilty 
conscience. What can we do ? I wish we did not see 
such things." 

For my part, I would not look behind. Heaven 
knows, it was bad enough to see ahead, where horses 
stumbled and fell from weakness, while the horrible 



ro8 FREEING THE FREE STATE 

aasvogels swept in circles over them, eager to rend 
their living flesh. Oxen, too, were lying everywhere, 
with straight, stiff legs silhouetted against the veldt. 
They looked like the toy animals that children make 
out of round potatoes with wooden matches for legs. 

Everywhere also great army biscuit tins, gleaming 
like masses of crystal, littered the slovenly face of the 
earth. Cartridge shells, bully beef tins, tattered coats 
and trousers torn from wounded bodies, cartridge pa- 
pers, shrapnel shells and shot, trenches, little forts with 
crowns of sand bags — these, also, grew familiar as house- 
hold ornaments. 

Where there had not been a battle there had been a 
camp, and where there were no signs of camping there 
were almost sure to be the furrows and the waste of 
Vv'ar. When we found gin-bottles and three-legged, pot- 
bellied iron kettles, we knew we were where the Boers 
had camped. When we saw only shiny biscuit tins the 
size of little trunks we needed not to be told that we 
stood where there had rested an army that had fed 
upon only one biscuit a day, but had gone uncomplain- 
ingly on, well content with being led by the greatest 
wizard of war since Napoleon — the British soldier's 
idol, little Bobs. 

As I passed across the river at Paardeberg battlefield, 
I came upon two mountains — of what, do you think ? 
One of compressed hay and one of oats. And both 
were on fire, being burned by some men of the War- 



FREEING THE FREE STATE 109 

wickshire Regiment, by order of the Field-Marshal, who 
had no waggons to bring away the precious food, and 
did not mean that the Boers should get it. Awaiting 
the torch was another great hillock made of a thousand 
boxes of biscuits, while seventy miles ahead horses and 
men were on half-rations or less. Such is wan Such 
is what must be endured by Tommy, by his generals 
— aye, by the Duke of Westminster, who has been glad 
to borrow a blanket, ere this, and six feet of the veldt 
for his bed. 

All places on the veldt are alike, but they have dif- 
ferent names. At one spot in the monotony called 
Poplar Grove — and eternally to be known as a battle- 
field, or more strictly as a place where the British 
jogged the Boer rear along with their bullets — we met 
a little band of Engineers with heavy waggons, loaded 
with telegraph wire and tools. They were setting up 
the field telegraph, and repairing what had been set up 
and then knocked down by buck waggons at night. 

" You are the first civilians to make this journey," 
said an officer. " The enemy is all about us, and we 
have not guarded the route ; those hills ahead are full 
of Boers. They copped a cart and horses there yester- 
day, and they have been sniping us as our men have 
passed along the road." 

We outspanned and cooked breakfast, and the little 
caravan disappeared over a ridge beside the dangerous 
kopjes. On the instant that we thought ourselves alone 



no FREEING THE FREE STATE 

there sprang up, as if out of the earth, a Boer and his 
grown-up son — both on horseback, and both making 
straight for us. They came, and stood by our camp- 
fire and looked us over, and they went to our cart and 
examined its contents. They then advised us how to 
go on to the army by the shortest way, beside their 
hostile kopjes. And presently they rode off and lin- 
gered at a distance watching us. They were a dirty, 
well set-up lithe pair, who sat their fine horses like 
centaurs. We took a route they had not recommended, 
dodging their kopjes and soon overtaking and passing 
the Royal Engineers. Again we were alone upon the 
veldt. 

After this we met many Boers, who always made 
straight for us. Each time -Cfe gave ourselves up for 
lost, and made up our minds to go to Pretoria without 
resistance. But all these Boers were fence-straddling 
wretches who pretended to be glad we had come, and 
were sure to tell us that the Boer army had treated 
them very kindly, but the British had stolen their hens 
and turkeys — and to whom should they make out their 
bills ? As a matter of fact, every one of them had sold 
live stock and forage to the British and been generously 
paid, and the thefts of which they complained were 
trivial — even if their stories were true. 

Wherever there had been a British camp one found 
a great litter of little bits of writing-paper, every tenth 
piece marked with a line of x x x x x x or double or 



FREEING THE FREE STATE in 

treble lines of them, followed by the words, " Ever 
your sweetheart, Alice," or "Your very loving Molly." 
These were Tommy's letters from the farms of England 
and the servants' halls of her cities. 

It seemed to me that all the Mollies and Alices wrote 
alike, in very bold, thick letters. And their kisses were 
so hearty and abundant that they stood out on the 
veldt, and were not to be passed unseen — though it 
did seem like sacrilege to notice them. 

Dear rosy Molly in your gown of print and your 
flower-framed cottage in Derbyshire, never make your 
kisses any smaller, and do not complain that they spent 
their mere Avasted skeletons on the desert veldt. 
Rather be proud that you thus sent to Africa the best 
things it had got — your brave lovers and your steadfast 
love. , 

Dear Alice, in your starched cap and apron, as I see 
you meeting the postman at your master's door in 
London, let me supplement the whisper in your heart by 
saying that Tommy deserved the four lines of tender 
crosses that were like a battalion of cupids, marching at 
the bottom of your letter. He was rough and dirty, 
and he knew his comrades apart from one another more 
by the stains and rents of their tunics and trousers than 
by their all-alike, grimy blistered faces. But he was a 
good fellow— brave, tireless, patient, uncomplaining, 
painfully sober throughout the war, and true as steel 
to his sweetheart at home. 



112 FREEING THE FREE STATE 

Near Driefontein we came to the ranch-house of a 
German family named Mulke, and went in and had the 
inevitable coffee with them. There was a Boer 
ambulance doctor wandering about in the hall — a man 
attached to the German corps and afraid to go out and 
join his people. But of course the Mulkes were very- 
glad the British had come — as they would have been 
if the Boers had come instead. And, of course, the 
British had stolen their fowls — and all the rest of the 
monotonously sickening humbug of their kind. There 
was one stroke of genuineness in their talk, and this 
was it : — 

*' Ve hat Lort Ropperts here to preakfast yester- 
day morning," said Mrs. Mulke. *' I vos so clad to see 
him. And my ! ain't he little to be so glever and 
great ? And ve hat here der Brince of Deck, and a 
war writer of newsbabers named Hands, andderGount 
Gleichen. 

" * Vot is your name ? * I said ; and he said, ' Gleichen ' ; 
und I said, ' Not der Graf, berhaps ; ' and he said, * Yes, 
I am Der Graf ! ' und he vos in my kitchen. All of dem 
vos in der kitchen. My ! such a lot of grade beople to 
be in my house ! Und der Brince Deck said, ' I vill 
show you a bicture of your Kaiserin, and it is in my 
waggon.* Und he went oud und came again back und 
stuck his head in der kitchen window und said to my 
daughter, * tell your mother I am so sorry I can'd find 
der photograph of der Kaiserin.' Vos it not nice for 



FREEING THE FREE STATE 113 

him to dake so much trouble ? My ! he is so tall as 
der top of dat bicture vhich hangs by der top of dat 
door." 

We camped at Driefontein, where there had been a 
fearfully hot engagement two days before. Our tent 
was pitched beside a branch of the Australian hospital 
— then famed as the most excellent of army hospitals. 
Next day we were just behind the British as they swept 
the kopjes for Boers, and that evening we came upon 
Lord Roberts's transport, which deserves a longer 
article than this solely to itself. And yet it must get 
but a kodak snapshot and be done with. 

First we came upon a great plain alive with oxen, 
and, further on, an orderly array of acres of buck 
waggons. A few miles further along we saw another 
huge herd of oxen, and another field full of waggons 
in mathematical array. Each of these masses of trans- 
port we supposed to be the whole of the army's 
supply. 

On we rode, and on mounting a ridge we saw the 
entire veldt before us thickly covered with transport 
waggons — hundreds upon hundreds of them — and many 
times as many hundreds of oxen — and an army of 
blacks, their conductors. I never saw so many waggons, 
and I believe I never saw a tenth part of so many oxen. 

The whole space was thronged with the transport, 

which moved like a majestic army in itself. Its front 

ranks were tailing out into a long queue, and trekking 
8 



114 FREEING THE FREE STATE 

away. The rest were being inspanned. The noise of 
the bellowing of the beasts, of the barbaric yelling of 
the negroes, of the swishing and cracking of their 
enormous whips, and of the jolting and creaking of the 
waggons was a din as difficult to describe as to forget. 

On a side-road we drove past a mile of this extraordi- 
nary train of food, and then entered the great valley in 
front of Bloemfontein. And lo ! for at least four or 
five miles before us the vanguard of the transport still 
reached away. We had not seen half of it until then. 
Guards at five paces apart lined a portion of our route. 
Cavalrymen in large forces dashed along past us. Full 
companies of infantry kept slow pace with the 
waggons in other places. 

In time there came to be but one road, darkness fell, 
violent thunder, lightning, and rain burst upon the 
veldt, and at a mile and a half an hour we crept all 
night long towards Bloemfontein to the incessant tune 
of the cracking, air-slitting whips, and the tigerish yells 
of the vast-mouthed negroes. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE TAKING OF BLOEMFONTEIN 

That grunting, creaking, many-thousand-throated, 
many-mile-long centipede of wheels instead of legs 
reached the end of the valley before daybreak on 
March I2th. Thousands of soldiers Hngered behind 
and beside its tons of provisions, while a smaller force 
beat the hills commanding Bloemfontein. There were 
no armed Boers there offering to withstand them. 

I rode into Bloemfontein just as the cavalry were en- 
tering. It is a very pretty little city, not unlike many 
other tree-decked, garden-crowded little towns, except 
that it is nearly all one-storied. Its store buildings are 
modern, new, and tasteful, and its legislative and exec- 
utive buildings are such as one finds in the least pop- 
ulated parts of Australia and America. It has no man- 
ufactures. It is partly a capital in its atmosphere, but 
it is mainly domestic and semi-rural, and was founded 
by the English when they created the State as a buffer 
between the low-class Transvaal population and their 
own Cape Colony. Its capture was more like a festival 
than a disaster, but that was owing to the doublefaced- 

"5 



ii6 THE TAKING OF BLOEMFONTEIN 

ness of the few Boers, and many Germans and other 
foreigners there, who would have welcomed Kruger 
more sincerely. The army received an ovation. Union 
Jacks were flung out every here and there. The Gen- 
eral and the troops were cheered. Flowers, ribbons of 
English red, white, and blue, fruit and sandwiches 
were given to the soldiers by the young ladies of the 
town. 

There were several notable features of the British 
occupation of Bloemfontein — dramatic, humorous, or 
otherwise peculiar. 

A few hours before the British took the town it was 
not known that it was to be theirs without a sixth and 
last battle. We understood that the Boers were massed 
on the kopjes south and south-west of Bloemfontein, 
and General French was ordered to drive them away. 
He quickly found that the hills were either unoccupied, 
or deserted by the Boers on his approach, but a little 
shelling had to precede his mastery of all the heights. 

As soon as the correspondents who were with him 
realised that there was to be no defence of the town, 
two of them dashed along the valley and into the capi- 
tal on horseback, ahead of everyone else. These were 
Mr. H. A. Gwynne, of Renter's Agency, and Mr. Pat- 
terson, of the Sydney Herald, On the way they met a 
couple of men on bicycles, and were amazed to see 
them leap from their machines and throw up their 
hands in token of abject surrender and a desire to 



THE TAKING OF BLOEMFONTEIN 117 

escape instant death. They also met some men of the 
Royal Engineers rolling a drum of telegraph wire into 
the town. The place had not been taken. They had 
been ordered to take the wire along after the army, but 
they could not wait, so there they were plodding into 
an enemy's capital as unconcerned as so many street 
sweepers in Piccadilly. 

The horsemen dashed on, paying no heed to the 
frightened bicyclists, and pressed forward into the city, 
where they excited disappointingly slight interest until 
an emotional man ran towards them shouting : " The 
first of the British ! The first of the British ! " 

At the club they spread the news of the coming of 
the army, and this spurred several of the leading offi- 
cials to undertake negotiations with them on behalf of 
the town. These gentlemen were piloted in their car- 
riages out to General Roberts's headquarters on a rocky 
kopje. Mr. Gwynne was with the late G. W. Steevens 
and Mr. Peel when those three correspondents induced 
the citizens of Volo to surrender to them in the Turco- 
Greek war, and he felt a strong inclination to repeat 
that performance here in Bloemfontein. But he re- 
strained himself. He appears to have felt a greater re- 
spect for British authority than he had shown for that 
of the Turks. 

The Acting State Secretary, the Mayor, and the 
Landdrost were among those who went out to meet 
Lord Roberts. They wore linen shirts and clean linen 



Ii8 THE TAKING OF BLOEMFONTEIN 

collars, and were greatly superior in appearance to the 
fighting Boers we have seen as our prisoners. 

General Roberts shook hands with each man, and 
asked them what they had to say. They replied that 
they wished to surrender the city, and that the reason 
no reply had been sent to the British demand for a 
surrender within a period that had already expired was 
that the military Boers were relied on to send their 
answer, but had run away instead of either fighting or 
yielding. The committee asked that life and property 
within their town should be respected, and this Lord 
Roberts instantly promised, adding that, if they so de- 
sired, he would at once begin policing the streets. 

After this the Acting State Secretary, Mr. Collins, 
formally delivered up the keys of the public buildings, 
which Lord Roberts accepted with a polite bow. A 
foreign consul then asked for protection for himself 
and the other consuls in the city, and the interview 
came to an end. 

Lord Roberts then arranged for his progress through 
the capital. He ordered up the first brigade of cav- 
alry, and followed this troop, leading his personal staff 
and his general staff. After these he placed the for- 
eign attaches, the correspondents, and his bodyguard, 
and then came a long line of cavalry four abreast. 

When this imposing procession started many citizens 
on bicycles came out to meet the conquerors, and 
when the town was entered a mighty burst of English 



THE TAKING OF BLOEMFONTEIN 119 

cheering broke from hundreds of throats. In the 
crowd a very few faces that may have been sullen or 
may only have been stolid broke the otherwise general 
expression of welcome and gratification. 

As the procession moved slowly and with great dig- 
nity through the streets an unexpected and humorous 
incident delayed its progress. Taking advantage of 
the excitement and confusion, many negroes had 
broken into the Free State barracks, and were looting 
the building. Lord Roberts ordered a halt, and com- 
manded that this should be stopped. The duty of 
driving the negroes away from the barracks fell upon 
the Duke of Westminster, Lord Stanley, Lord Dudley, 
General Pretyman, and the Honourable Seymour For- 
tescue, who hustled the natives about while the crowd 
and the army stood and looked on. 

This done, the troops resumed their solemn march. 
At the Presidency there was another halt while the 
British flag was hoisted on the official staff. Several 
of the same distinguished gentlemen participated in 
this more grateful task. The flag that was eventually 
sent up was the beautiful silken one sent by Lady 
Roberts to her husband. Seymour Fortescue, R.N., 
was deputed to fasten the standard on the lanyard with 
true sailor knots, and for some reason he was painfully 
slow at the work. To lighten the strain the Bloem- 
fontein populace sang " God Save the Queen." 

When the flag was at last hauled to the staff-head 



I20 THE TAKING OF BLOEMFONTEIN 

the troops repeated the anthem. When they had 
finished, and were standing erect and proud, despite 
their soiled and battered appearance, the people sang 
" Tommy Atkins " and " Soldiers of the Queen ** with 
a wonderful and surprising effect, for no one had ex- 
pected to hear those songs sung by the populace in the 
enemy's capital. 

Of all that I saw of the process of occupation noth- 
ing affected me so much as the great parade of the 
majority of Lord Roberts's troops on the next morn- 
ing — that of Wednesday. All the men had enjoyed 
a most unusual wash, and showed shiny faces and un- 
wontedly clean hands, but their suits of khaki were so 
stained and discoloured, and their accoutrements were 
so worn and battered, that at first I feared the towns- 
folk would not fully appreciate the fact that they were 
washed. They were, indeed, a soiled and bedraggled 
lot. All had been soaked in the heavy rain of the pre- 
ceding night, and their uniform had dried in wrinkles. 
I was sorry to feel that I, and not the others, knew 
how strange it felt to them to be clean once more. 
Presently I thought how hungry all must be, for a bis- 
cuit had been all they had to eat on more than one 
day, and not in weeks had any day brought them a 
single solid meal. I wished the gaping crowd could 
know this, and regale them with warm sympathy, if 
nothing more. 

Next I noticed how proud every Tommy of them 



THE TAKING OF BLOEMFONTEIN 121 

was feeling — how briskly and lightly they marched, 
how high they held their chins, and ho(|v briWit were 
all their eyes. I had momentarily misjudged thkbrave 
and uncomplaining lads. They had no wish for Sym- 
pathy ; they were no longer hungry; the staini and 
wrinkles on their clothing were well earned and proudly 
borne. I turned aside and whispered under my breath, 
" God bless Tommy Atkins. He has done his duty, 
and is satisfied with the reward of merely marching 
through the capital of the rich new territory he has 
given to the Queen and nation." 

The Oxfords swept by, thinned in ranks ; the Welsh- 
men, fresh from the lurid jaws of Hades-like Paarde- 
berg, strode lightly past ; the brave men of Essex, cov- 
ered with new glory, marched proudly along; the 
splendid Yorks, whose ranks had just been tattered by 
battle strokes, trooped jauntily by. Looking on at 
them all were thousands who never had heard of the 
feats these men were fresh from, or the dangers they 
had braved. But what did the soldiers care ? What 
care their kith and kin at home ? All alike in those 
ranks are Tommies, just as nearly all Tommies are 
alike — fearlessly doing their duty, cheerily bearing 
their hardships, laughing and singing defiance to hun- 
ger and heat, frost and fatigue ; all genuine, unpre- 
tending, usually invincible soldiers of the Queen. 

Here and there were English flags, and here and 
.there a man or woman cried out, " God bless you, 



122 THE TAKING OF BLOEMFONTEIN 

boys." At one place two little girls ran out and pinned 
red, white, and blue ribbons to the soldiers' coats, and 
at another two young ladies distributed fruit and sand- 
wiches — which more than one officer took as eagerly as 
the men in the ranks. A burly negro, whose face quiv- 
ered with excitement, stood by and called out thou- 
sands upon thousands of times, '' Thank you, thank 
you. Thank you for coming. Thank you." 

Bloemfontein looked as if it ought to be the capital 
city of peace and domesticity. It is only a little bunch 
of white, grey, and red houses, and dainty ornamental 
little shop-buildings, but these are so set about with 
foliage and flowers, that the place seems to have been 
built in a park or public garden. As there are no man- 
ufactures, the place is all homes excepting the necessary 
shops. 

At the Presidency, where Lord Roberts was quartered, 
there was a distinct legislative atmosphere, and you felt 
that you were in a national capital — albeit its scale is 
very small. The heart of the town is an open square, 
with the shops, the club, a hotel, and a pubUc building 
facing it. In the middle of the square is the market 
shed, where a part of the often-honoured City Imperial 
Volunteers were headquartered, and where they slept 
on the greengrocers' counters by night. 

In this square, on the night after we occupied the 
town, I witnessed a scene that was almost hallowed in 
my eyes. It must be explained, by way of preface, that 



THE TAKING OF BLOEMFONTEIN 123 

the British are a law-loving and a law-abiding people to 
a degree not approached by any other people I have ever 
seen. As Lord Roberts had laid down the law that 
all property in Bloemfontein was to be respected, and 
the enemy were to have courteous treatment, the army 
at once adopted a consistent course of behaviour. 
Consequently, the roaring lion crept into Bloemfontein 
a gentle lamb, a sucking dove in kindliness and mod- 
esty. The Boers had nailed tin sheets in front of their 
shops lest the soldiers should loot them, but now they 
began to rip these fortifications down, and to explain 
(like Boers even to the end) that they had put up the 
barricades against their own people, who were apt to 
be very lawless. At all events, down came the metal 
sheets, and out into the streets came the people 
to mingle with the officers, and stare at the occa- 
sional bodies of marching men going in and out of 
town. 

The second night of British rule came, and in the 
market square at nine o'clock a drum corps and four 
Scotch pipers came to make what melody these pre- 
historic instruments will yield when duly tortured. 
Out came the young girls and their beaux, the wives 
and husbands, the children, the grey beards and pillars 
of the place— and hundreds of Tommies. Two days 
before the men had been killing each other ; now they 
laughed and chatted, sang, and rubbed shoulders to- 
gether. The band stopped playing and sang, and the 



124 THE TAKING OF BLOEMFONTEIN 

Boers clapped hands, while the English cheered. It 
was like a night at Earl's Court. If you had dropped 
into Bloemfontein then you could not have believed 
what you saw. In nothing was there a suggestion that 
a war was on, that you were in a conquered city, that 
many a score of the hands that clapped applause were 
freshly stained with the blood of those with whose 
comrades their owners fraternised. 

It was a charming, a poetic, a blessed, but at the 
same time a most extraordinary, example of the strik- 
ing contrasts in the lights and shades of war. 

The Boers could not understand it. They would 
tell you if you asked them that they expected rudeness 
and enmity, harsh rules, and domineering insolence. 
Instead, they found themselves in the hands of quiet, 
civil, kindly people who seemed to want to be re- 
garded as brothers. They did not understand it, and 
neither did I. I admired and revered it, but I did not 
see how all the savagery and bitterness of so bloody, a 
war could be made to vanish in a day. 

And this must be said for the people of Bloemfon- 
tein : since it takes two sides to make up a brother- 
hood, and two well-disposed parties to create a friend- 
ship, they deserve as much credit as the British do 
for the continuance of sweetness and light in this 
little metropolis of gentle domesticity, good nature and 
contentment. 

It was altogether a wonderful situation. There were 



THE TAKING OF BLOEMFONTEIN 125 

unforgiving souls there to make exception to the rule, 
and emphasise the otherwise general goodwill. 

*' Oh, you may strut about and show yourself off here 
in town," said a Boer to a war correspondent, as one 
passed the other in the street, ** but you will be potted 
and sniped at wherever you go through the country." 

Again, an Englishman asked for breakfast in a 
second-class hotel in town, and it was refused. 

*' Can you tell me where I can get breakfast ? " the 
German was asked. '* I can only tell you that I am 
your enemy," was the reply. 

It was the Germans who had all along been most 
bitter the English people told me — and there are a 
great many Germans there in business. 



CHAPTER XIV 

WAITING, NOT WASTING TIME 

There was much difference between the people at 
home and the people in the army in South Africa. 
At home, when Lord Roberts rested for a month or 
six weeks in Bloemfontein, the people began to com- 
plain, to entertain doubts of the great man's general- 
ship, and to desire that he should account for the whys 
and wherefores of his behaviour. This must not be 
denied to-day, because we of the army know it, and we 
knew it then. It rang out in the telegrams to the cor- 
respondents, it was stated in letters to the officers, it 
even made itself heard in the House of Commons. 
Aye, so mercurial is humanity, and so fickle is a people 
entrusted with self-government, that since I came home 
I have read in the pages of a daily journal a jubilant 
leader calling general attention to the wonders per- 
formed by Lord Roberts in one month, and yet in 
another month the same editors were wondering how 
his later inaction could be explained. 

In the first editorial we learned that in one short 

jcnonth this modern Marlborough and Wellington had 

126 



WAITING, NOT WASTING TIME 127 

relieved Kimberley, freed Ladysmith, captured the 
leading Boer general and his army, and entered Bloem- 
fontein. And yet in the next month the question was 
soberly put whether there was any good reason for 
Lord Roberts to fall into Methuen's habit of picknick- 
ing for a month of Sundays whenever he came to a 
pleasant place. I would ask the public to remember 
this — if it would do any good. But it will not. I 
long ago gave up the task of reforming this world. 
I am now waiting until my soul is disembodied, and I 
can fly to Mars. That planet is smaller, and I have a 
dim hope that its people are wiser — for surely no 
others except ourselves go on repeating the same old 
follies, mistakes, and weaknesses, for twenty centuries 
on end. 

As if it were not enough to take Bloemfontein, cap- 
ture Cronje, clear the Boers off the railway in the west, 
relieve Kimberley, and rescue Ladysmith by reflex 
action ! 

If Lord Roberts had been content with these achieve- 
ments and come home then, his glory would have been 
that of the greatest commander-in-chief now living; 
surely far the greatest who has proved himself on the 
battlefield. 

But wherever Lord Roberts went and whatever he 
did, his army could do no more. It had worked and 
fought and suffered ; been robbed of food, and horses, 
and strength ; been strained, and exposed, and tired, 



128 WAITING, NOT WASTING TIME 

and shot down to the last degree that even such an 
army could stand. It had come to a halt that must 
have been accepted even had it not been ordered. It 
could not go on without food, it could not drag either 
food or men without horses and mules and oxen, it 
could not know what sort of warfare to go on with 
until its commander learned the manner and spirit in 
which the conquered Free Staters took their defeat. 
There were bridges to be rebuilt, rails to be relaid, 
hospitals to be set up, officers to be appointed in place 
of the dead and sick and wounded, a new provisional 
or martial government to be established, and protected 
until it won its way. 

The army did not know all this, though it did realise 
a part of it. But the army did not care. It left it all 
to " Bobs." That was the difference between the 
people in England and the makers and defenders of 
their empire. The people in England grumbled and 
" wanted to know, you know." The army whistled and 
sang and rested and recuperated, saying only, " Bobs 
is doing it. Bobs knows." 

To be in a conquered capital, to witness the lights 
and shadows of conquest and submission, to feel the 
enthusiasm of the army thrilling you, and yet to note 
the occasional cold draughts of sullenness or protest 
from the enemy — these were sensations new to most 
of us, and almost so to me. 

The only conquerors I ever marched with before 



WAITING, NOT WASTING TIME 129 

were Turks, who elbowed Greeks aside — and that is 
not nearly the same as being with the British in Boer- 
dom. Some had a time week, loafing and feeding 
after the breathless pace Lord Roberts led us, and the 
shortness of food that went with him. Others made 
little expeditions, mending railways or '' bill-sticking," 
as was called the distribution of the Field Marshal's proc- 
lamation inviting the Free Staters to lay down their 
arms. And some continued to be shot at in petty skir- 
rr^ishes on the surrounding veldt. 

Quiet reigned in Bloemfontein while we stayed there ; 
even 30,000 foreign troops in and about this flowery, 
leafy capital seemed not able to make anything but 
quiet. A few active enemies were arrested, and a few 
silly folk followed them to Capetown, or else were warned 
for wearing Free State buttons, and for being too openly 
disgruntled by the coming of the army. One who escaped 
molestation was a shop girl who would not wait on the 
soldiers, who were pouring out their petty earnings in a 
cataract of silver in every shop, and apparently upon 
everything that their money would purchase— useful 
and useless alike. 

We heard that there was a great deal of Boer spirit 
left in the place ; but it hid itself in its houses, and 
was a great deal more quiet and circumspect than the 
open delight of the people of English stock who lived 
here through the war, and, as one of them told me, had 
to control their faces as if they were masks when they 
9 



I30 WAITING, NOT WASTING TIME 

walked the streets, lest the Boers should read in their 
features some suspicious suggestion of enmity or of 
rejoicing over the successes of the British arms. 

The Boers used to toss white feathers into the 
carriages of the British families whose men would not 
go out to war for the Dutch. Then, again, a black list 
of pro-British *' misbehavers " was kept, and a woman 
who merely waved her hand in token of " farewell " to 
a train-load of British prisoners bound for Pretoria was 
told that the act was recorded in the police books, and 
that she must be very careful after that. A great 
number of Englishwomen got black marks in the police 
book, you may be sure. 

The presiding genius of this military capital of the 
new colony was, of course, the Field Marshal. Lord 
Roberts lived in what is called " The Residency," or 
palace of the President, which was hastily left behind 
by ex-President Steyn when that political misfit felt an 
urgent impulse to set up another capital in his top-hat 
at Kroonstadt. The Residency is a very presentable 
executive mansion, with a distinct air of rulership about 
its exterior, and a sort of official atmosphere indoors 
which you cannot miss or mistake. 

It contains a large drawing or reception-room, an 
equally large dining-hall, and a ball-room twice as large 
as either. 

The reception-room is cheaply wall-papered, and the 
heavy carpet is puckered up in welts all over the floor, 



WAITING, NOT WASTING TIME 131 

but it is a big room and has great cut-glass candelabra 
and a large mirror and many chairs and tables — at which 
Lord Roberts at once set dukes and lords to toil with 
pens. The dining-room is as bare as it can well be 
but it is imposing and well-proportioned. It contains 
a picture of the late President Brand, a table, and some 
chairs — two tables, in fact, after Lord Roberts came, 
for the Field Marshal ate at his own little table with his 
own guests, while his staff of famous noblemen en- 
circled the big table. When no meal was on soldier- 
clerks rattled type-writing-machines on the main 
dining-table. 

I just peeped into the huge ball-room, and saw that 
it was another workshop full of busy officers at tables, 
for the head of the army carried a beehive of industry 
with him. His toilers were the most distinguished 
men of England by birth or achievement, but they 
seemed to have given over fighting and starving only 
to work like badgers — wherein they were less well off 
than Tommy Atkins, who was trotting about from shop 
to shop, quite as much at home as if he had always 
lived there, and having a delightful time. 

Bloemfontein, always a capital, but always a village, 
had its normal population of about 4,000 swollen by the 
influx of troops. In consequence the pavements were 
crowded, and the streets roared with army waggons. 
Thousands of troops were in the town, and the rest of 
our army of 80,000 men was in a circle of camps on 



132 WAITING, NOT WASTING TIME 

the veldt, within three to five miles of the market- 
place. 

The shops were soon denuded of everything, and 
even food became scarce, because the farm waggons 
were emptied by the suburban camps. 

The circulation of the daily paper, which was four 
hundred before this, rose to from five to seven thou- 
sand a day. 

The hotels were packed, the club walled in by horses, 
and even the hallways were blocked with officers repre- 
senting all the regular regiments and every colony. 

An immense trade was done in drinks, but these re- 
freshments were confined to gin, vermouth, and port 
wine. There was not a drop of whiskey to be had 
owing to the military monopoly of the railway. Even 
the materials for the manufacture of soda water were 
exhausted. 

Winter was perceptibly hastening its advent. There 
was an immense demand for woollen khaki, but the 
tailors had sold out everything except a green cloth 
like the uniform of the foresters in Germany, and this 
was becoming popular because there was nothing else 
obtainable. 

An orchestral concert was given in the market square 
at supper time, and thereafter the town became as dead 
as a door-nail. Only a few people with military passes 
were allowed in the streets, in order to prevent com- 
munication with the Boers outside. Indeed, it was a 



WAITING, NOT WASTING TIME 133 

fact that some of the townsfolk who lived neighbourly 
with the British were in the habit of sneaking out of 
their houses at dark, joining their commandoes, fight- 
ing with them, and sneaking back into town again to 
rest. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF WAR 

As soon as we reached Bloemfontein Lord Roberts 
added to his military duties those of Administrator, or 
Military Governor — of a Viceroy practically. He ap- 
pointed a police force, a provost marshal and staff, a 
military governor of the town, a mounted police force 
for the entire conquered portion of the Free State, a 
chief of the Railway service, and attended to the one 
thousand and one demands created by the new situ- 
ation. 

Sir Alfred Milner came — at great risk to himself, as 
it seemed — and visited the capital of the new British 
colony, while among many notables who followed or 
preceded him were Lord Elphinstone, Lady Edward 
Cecil, Mr. Burdett-Coutts, Sir Ellis Ashmead Bartlett, 
the late Admiral Maxse, and others — all of whom had 
to put up with such fare and accommodations as could 
be had at two of the country taverns. 

We all put on what appearance of civilisation we 

could make, giving bad dinners at the hotel, and worse 

ones at the headquarters of the subordinate generals, 
134 



THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF WAR 135 

the best of the poor and scanty fare of the place being 
secured for the Residency by the enthusiastic members 
of the Field-Marshal's staff. Two notable occasions 
were the dinner given to the foreign military attaches 
by Lord Roberts at the Residency, and the dinner 
which four of us war correspondents arranged at the 
railway station in honour of the High Commissioner, the 
Field-Marshal, and Rudyard Kipling. This dinner, 
given to these distinguished gentlemen by Mr, James 
Barnes, of the American Press, Percival Landon of The 
Times, H. A. Gwynne of Reuter's Agency, and myself, 
took place on the night of March 28th. 

We selected the railway station restaurant because it 
was the largest dining-room in town and the cook was 
the most expert man of his calling in that woe-begone 
and inhospitable region. But it mattered very little 
about the room or the cook where such a delightful 
break in the routine of army life was concerned, for 
Shakespeare's dictum " Small cheer and great welcome 
makes a merry feast," could but be true when so 
notable and interesting a company assembled. 

We had for our guests not only Sir Alfred Milner, 
Lord Roberts, and Mr. Kipling, for whom we gave the 
dinner, but General Pole-Carew, General Hector Mac- 
donald, General Sir Henry E. Colvile, General Forestier 
Walker, General G. T. Pretyman, Governor of the cap- 
ital. Lord Stanley, Lord Kerry, Colonel Neville Cham- 
berlain, Colonel Girouard, Colonel Otter of the Cana- 



136 THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF WAR 

dian Forces, Mr. Hanbury Williams, Lester Ralph, W. 
B. WoUen, H. C. Shelley, Mr. H. F. Prevost Battersby, 
and Mr. W. Blelock. Lord Kitchener was to have been 
present, but was not yet back from Prieska, where he 
was quickly smothering a rebellion. 

The artists, Messrs. Wollen and Lester Ralph, de- 
signed an especial menu-card for each guest, the army 
sent a full band, the dinner was fairly good, and the 
wines were excellent ; but the speeches — they were 
never to be forgotten by those who heard them, and 
never to be reported or repeated for those who did not. 
The High Commissioner was toasted first, and spoke 
of his earlier life on the press, of which it was evident 
that he had both proud and pleasant recollections. The 
wonderful man of the hour and idol of his army paid 
his hosts the high compliment of asking whether he 
" might not call us comrades," we journalists, of whom 
he said that we shared the same dangers and exposure, 
hunger, fatigue, and thirst, as he and his troops. Rud- 
yard Kipling, most powerful of English writers, who 
became after that our colleague and companion in The 
Friend office, pledged us all to drink to the health of 
that personage who had turned this kingdom into a 
true empire by riveting her colonies to her side and 
who had added vast new territories to the realm. And 
on this he gave us the name of — Kruger ! 

Another notable gathering during this period of ap- 
parent inactivity was a meeting of the Army Temper- 



THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF WAR 137 

ance Association, at which Lord Roberts was the prin- 
cipal figure. He pointed out to the soldiers the ad- 
vantages of joining the association. Every member 
was known to the commanding officer, and for impor- 
tant posts men were often chosen because of their 
membership. 

The soldier hearers dwelt on every word that fell from 
the lips of the man they loved. When he spoke of 
" the army I now have the great honour of command- 
ing," Lord Roberts betrayed a depth of feeling in his 
voice. 

He was proud to be the leader of " the best-behaved 
army in the world." They had marched uncomplain- 
ingly, and endured all the hardships of the campaign, 
and, he exclaimed, '* how well they had fought ! " 

Then he added, merrily, " The whole army have been 
members of the association. Modder water was all 
they had to drink, and sometimes little of that." 

A capital and high-class concert, promoted by other 
correspondents, led by Mr. Bennet Burleigh, and 
greatly strengthened by the war artists under the lead- 
ership of Mr. W. B. Wollen, was the last of these novel 
and inspiriting entertainments, which could not have 
been carried out except with Lord Roberts's consent, 
and which were heartily approved of and aided by him. 
He wanted the men of all ranks to be amused, enter- 
tained, and lifted out of the strain to which they had 
been subjected. " I wired for permission to bring a 



138 THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF WAR 

music hall company to Bloemfontein/* a theatrical 
manager said to me afterwards, " and had an immediate 
answer urging me to come— but there were no perform- 
ers to be got in Africa." 



CHAPTER XVI 

BITTER HATE FOR SWEETEST LOVE 

The " Miss Bloemfontein ** episode deserves more, 
perhaps, than the passing reference which has been 
made to it by me in my correspondence, and elsewhere 
in this book. The reader must know that after our 
fighting, hunger, and exposure on the veldt, the mere 
sight of the garden-like little capital of the smaller 
Boer State was refreshing in a high degree. In the 
excess of their pleasure at finding themselves at last in 
a town where there were hotels and a club and modern 
shops, some men went to the extreme of likening the 
place to "home" — to an English village. It did not 
deserve such praise. It was merely a few sprawling, 
ragged gum trees, and some below-the-average gardens 
that fascinated us who had grown deadly tired of the 
bare brown monotony of the veldt. Bloemfontein's 
outward attractions were very thin, while below and 
beneath them was a state of sanitation and a condition 
of nature such as to render the place a veritable death- 
trap, wherein our men fell prostrated by thousands 
with fever and other illnesses. Enteric, the inhabitants 

139 



I40 BITTER HATE FOR SWEETEST LOVE 

frankly told us, had been epidemic there every spring 
and summer for years. 

However, I was no different from the others, and 
easily fell a victim to first appearances. I do not 
blame myself for being bewitched by the foliage and 
the flowers ; but that I — of all men — I, who had un- 
ceasingly warned the generals in the field and the 
people at home against the treachery, falseness, and 
" slimness " of the Boers, should have been, for a single 
day, tricked into reposing confidence in their protesta- 
tions of friendship for their conquerors — that was 
almost a disgrace as well as a pity, and a thing to 
wonder at. 

How completely I was done by these double-faced 
Boers and their fellow-citizens of other blood, who out- 
did even the Boers in cunning and false pretences of 
friendship, the article I wrote for The Friend -wiW 
prove. I only ask the reader to remember that we 
were hungry for a rest from fighting and from distrust- 
ing those who should have played the true part of 
friends. And when we entered Bloemfontein and the 
people cheered us and sang " God Save the Queen " 
and " Tommy Atkins," we fancied we had come to a 
place that boasted a kinship with England, and was 
anxious to prove it. This was the feeling that 
prompted the article entitled " A Love Letter to Miss 
Bloemfontein," which was published in the paper 
edited by Messrs. Landon, Gwynne, F. W. Buxton, 



BITTER HATE FOR SWEETEST LOVE 141 

and myself, before Rudyard Kipling joined us and 
which I now reproduce. 

THE FRIEND, March 17, 1900. 
To Miss Bloemfontein. 

A LOVE LETTER. 

Come, little Miss Bloemfontein, sit down beside me 
and let me hold your dimpled hand, and look into 
those eyes which have caught the wonderful blue of 
these heavens and the tints of your gardens and your 
bowery streets. I think our whole army likes you, 
you belle of the Boer aristocracy. You certainly 
change your lovers easily and lightly, but soldiers are 
reported not to mind a little coquetry when they are 
far from home. You have tripped out to meet us so 
enticingly, you have so led us into your bower with 
your warm little hand, and you have spoken so kindly 
to us that we dislike to think you were quite the same 
to your earlier beaux in their homespun suits, their 
flapping hats, and their lavish indulgence in whiskers 
and beards, which, as you must know, are the cheapest 
of luxuries — prodigalities in which misers indulge to 
make a show, and save a barber's bill. 

You might have been hateful to us, and we could 
not have blamed you, for we came too nearly as cer- 
tain other soldiers came to the Sabine sisterhood, with 
blood in our eyes and weapons in hand, fancying that 



142 BITTER HATE FOR SWEETEST LOVE 

you would cling to your old love, and never dreaming 
that he would run away and leave you unprotected in 
this placid and pretty little boudoir that you have set 
up here. You won't forget that little episode, will you, 
Miss Bloemfontein ? And you did take note, didn't 
you, my dear? that when we found you deserted, all 
forlorn, we changed from lion to lamb, from bluster- 
ing warrior to soft-spoken wooer. We hurled no harsh 
word at your people, and did their goods no violence. 
Even now we stand aside, in our own place, crowding 
none of your servitors, but smiling back the smiles you 
bathe us in, and breathing our admiration softly — for 
you are a pretty miss and gentle — and we are not so 
stupid as to fail to see that you are no Boadicea, but 
a lover of peace and concord, if ever one has lived on 
earth since the Muses took to the clouds. 

Sweetness of loving sighs its soft song of delight in 
every breeze that shakes the leaves of your tree-gar- 
lands. Domesticity asserts its command, by your 
order, in the aspect of every cottage in your parklike 
nest. Homely comfort radiates from the hearths and 
the faces of all who live under your delightful rule. 

I never anywhere saw a prettier or more astonishing 
scene than I witnessed in your market square on the 
second night of our stay, which we hope you will invite 
us to prolong to eternity. We sent a few stained and 
greasy melodists with pipes and drums to play in the 
square, partly to show you that we had dethroned 



BITTER HATE FOR SWEETEST LOVE 143 

Mars, and substituted Pan in the best niche in our 
hearts, and partly to set our own pleasure tripping to 
gay tunes. And lo ! out you came with your maidens 
and their lovers, your old men and matrons, and the 
children within your gates. And we all forgot that 
we had quarrelled with your cast-off favourite, that each 
of us had shed the other's blood, and that we had come 
to you with an anger which we supposed you matched 
within your own fair bosom. Your people and ours 
touched elbows and laughed and sang together. For 
one, I was amazed. Of all the sharp contrasts of strife 
I know of none so bold and strong as that scene when 
it is compared with the scenes of only a few days back 
at Paardeberg and Driefontein. 

It was your magic, your witchery, your tact that 
brought it about, you South African beauty. Without 
these helps we never could have enjoyed that evening 
as we did, and that evening was the bridge which 
spanned the gulf between the angry past and the happy 
present in our lives, little miss. 

Draw closer, Miss Bloemfontein ; let our arms touch, 
and the thrill of ardent friendship vivify our new rela- 
tion. You do like the British, don't you, dear ? You 
don't have to be British yourself, you know. You can 
stay on being Dutch, and piously Presbyterian, and all 
the rest. They will respect whatever you admire, and 
will promise to make you richer, freer, happier, and 
even more beautiful — with the ripened charms of a long- 



144 BITTER HATE FOR SWEETEST LOVE 

assured content, if only you will let your chief predi- 
cant publish the banns next Sunday — or sooner if you 

will. 

J.R. 

Two days passed and the editors of The Friend were 
astonished at receiving a reply written in a lady's hand- 
writing, and having all the appearance of genuineness. 
Investigation revealed the fact that a young miss of the 
town, incensed beyond endurance by the reflections 
upon the loyalty of Bloemfontein to the Boers, had 
written us her protest. It read as follows : — 

To Mr. Englishman. 

A LOVELESS LETTER. 

Come, tall Mr. Englishman, and sit down beside me, 
but for the love of Heaven, do not look into my eyes 
lest they scorch you with a fiery " hate of hate." The 
blue of mine eyes may be perilously near that blue 
which men have named electric, and such an electric 
shock of scorn would they shoot that you would wish 
yourself amidst the turmoil of war again, some of whose 
bolts and bombs have taken the lives of our fathers, 
brothers, friends ! You will not wonder, then, that I 
do not like your whole army or any part thereof, 
although it may have done me the great and unwished- 
for honour of liking me — or you, the conqueror of 
the land which is mine by the same right as your little 



BITTER HATE FOR SWEETEST LOVE 145 

island is yours — the right of old tradition, which is so 
great a factor in the history of nations, and in which 
our land abounds — the right of residence which has 
been ours since our peacefully ruled and hitherto pros- 
perous little Free State was created — the right of love 
for the land of our birth — the right of pride in our de- 
spised beaux, with their homespun suits and lavish 
beards and whiskers, who have gone out to fight with 
such bravery for their cause and country. 

Surely, Mr. Englishman, you of all men should be 
able to appreciate this factor in them, you who pride 
yourself on being the bravest man, of the bravest of 
living nations. Were this factor missing in them would 
you not have been here five long months ago ? Surely, 
you, I say, should be able to overlook such small mat- 
ters as the bad cut of their coats and the length of their 
beards. You should know that greatness does not lie 
in outward seeming. 

Please do not say " Miss Bloemfontein tripped out 

to meet us enticingly " ; say, rather, little Miss Uit- 

lander, who has, as you rightly think, by no means 

hitherto scorned our homespun youths, and to whom 

we extended a loving hand when she came, and who 

now, in return for this, unnecessarily flaunts your colours 

in our faces and welcomes you too kindly. Much bitter 

sorrow was there, sly sir, when you entered this loved 

home of ours ; I and my sisters, who felt as would your 

English dames were another William the Conqueror 
10 



146 BITTER HATE FOR SWEETEST LOVE 

to take their island home from them, lay in dumb 
anguish, and writhed when the word went forth, " we 
have fallen into bondage," " our enemy hath us in 
his grasp " — and our cup of bitterness was more than 
full. 

We do cling to our old love, who left us with much 
misgiving to your tender mercies. Mr. Englishman, 
fain would he have stayed to protect us but that he had 
his command to go — and this is another thing which 
you, who think so much of discipline, should be able to 
appreciate. Though, for fear of your displeasure, we 
must hide our feelings, you are hateful to us, oh slayer 
of our brothers and taker of our home ! 

We will not forget, Mr. Englishman, and are truly 
grateful to you, that you behaved to us with common 
courtesy and stood aside to let us pass ; but surely you, 
the politest of polite men, would not take credit for 
that which should be the birthright of all gentlemen. 
We dwell not in times of Sabine sisterhoods, good 
sir. 

And if little Miss Uitlander bathes you in smiles, 
and lisps pretty nothings into your much-astonished 
ear, call but to mind that she comes from '' your own 
far countree," and has here learned this way of welcom- 
ing the conqueror. 

I am no Boadicea, say you. Oh, sir, you mistake 
grievously. I would smite you with mine own hands 
were I able. Did you perhaps not catch a glimpse of 



BITTER HATE FOR SWEETEST LOVE 147 

me in General Cronje's laager, whither I went to share 
the danger with my brother and cheer him in his 
arduous task ? 

True it is that homely comfort abounds in our cot- 
tages, and should it not be so ? Perhaps there was a 
time, too, when your stately sister did not scorn to 
keep house, instead of attending theatres, soirees ^ musi- 
cales, at-homes. Evidently Miss Uitlander forgot the 
divine music of Queen's Hall and Covent Garden when 
she crowded to do justice to the awful and untuneful 
melodies to which your English bandsmen treated her 
on the market square, but, you see, " it is so long since 
she left ' home,' and it is sweet to hear those sounds 
which come straight from dear old England." I, sir, 
stopped my ears with cotton wool, for whatever Miss 
Bloemfontein is, she is musical, and even had I been 
pleased to see you, I could never have allowed myself 
to be tortured with those fragments of the Divine art. 
Poor Pan, he stood afar on the topmost steeple of the 
Dutch Church and played his pipes and wept, and had 
you not been so absorbed in *' tripping to your gay 
tunes " you might have heard faintly stealing over our 
ancient towers : " Heeft burghers hers t'lied der Vrej- 
heid aan," while the organ within our " piously Pres- 
byterian " edifice echoed the anthem which was caught 
up by the instrument in your exclusively English 
cathedral, and Miss Bloemfontein heard the echo and 
was comforted. 



148 BITTER HATE FOR SWEETEST LOYE 

And, now, Mr. Englishman, do you fully realise that 
I am not pleased to see you, that I hate to have you 
here, I — a real daughter of the soil — and if to-morrow 
I could turn you out I would do so joyously, while 
little Miss Uitlander would stand by, her lovely eyes 
moist with grateful tears, and whisper, " that is right," 
or perhaps push you with her tiny left hand while she 
once more extended her right to my badly-dressed 
brothers, as they came over the top of the Bloemfontein 
hill. 

The gulf between the angry past and the still more 
angry present will never be bridged, Mr. Englishman. 
You have made Afrikanderdom by fighting us, and 
have awakened in our breasts the knowledge that we 
are of another sort than yourselves. Only now, with 
the '' schwaanen lied " sounding in our ears do we feel 
what it is to have a country — to be a nation. 

Miss Bloemfontein. 

Supposing that Tke Friend was now likely to be- 
come the duelling ground of the young lady and one 
of its editors, if not also of her friends and British or 
Uitlander loyalists, we planned to publish a final word 
on our side, and give her the privilege of answering 
back. Then, we decided, the time would have come 
when we could politely announce that the correspond- 
ence was closed. With this in our minds we published 
my reply to her letter, and waited for an answer. We 



BITTER HATE FOR SWEETEST LOVE 149 

were doomed to wait. It never came. She had the 
wit to give the man the last word — and, probably, to 
laugh at him. 

The following was the response which she decoyed us 
into making while never intending to pursue the sub- 
ject any further herself : — 

THE MAN'S LAST WORD. 

Dear Miss Bloemfontein, — If there is doubt 
about which young lady it is who has made us wel- 
come here, there is none at all about the genuineness 
of your letter and yourself. Its sheets exhale the 
subtle perfume of the mimosa flower, its strong, free 
writing reveals the confidence, health, and high spirits 
of the graceful rider of the veldt. Thank God (and 
thank you, also, my dear), there is no line or phrase of 
resistance to our suit in all your letter but has a tender 
phrasing or carries a compliment — so that we know 
you do not dislike us a tenth so much as you hate the 
thought of seeming light-of-love, of feeling that we 
have dared to pity you, of fancying we think you are 
to be won for the mere asking. 

Sweetheart, that was a clumsy letter of ours if it 
ruffled your maidenly sensitiveness with such misappre- 
hensions. Henry V. was not the only one, or the last 
of us Englishmen, who could war with men better than 
he could woo women. And as Katharine looked 



ISO BITTER HATE FOR SWEETEST LOVE 

through young Hal's rough armour into his warm and 
loyal heart, so we ask you to do with us. 

Well, well, so it was your cousin, Miss Uitlander, 
whose azure eyes and twining fingers sent me into my 
rhapsody of love, while you, the true Katharine, the 
real princess, have held back, hid in some leafy bower 
of your pretty capital. Ah, well, it was not her hand 
that took our heart captive. It was not her eyes that 
slew us. What we loved was the essence of your soul 
and spirit, which breathed upon us from your parklike 
surroundings, from your trees and gardens, from the 
pretty, happy homes of your subjects. It was you we 
loved, dear neighbour, you whom we have admired 
through all your youth and never quarrelled with and 
never known to be at fault. 

As I wrote on Saturday, we still stand aside and 
look upon your charms of peaceful domesticity, all 
garlanded for your bridegroom. Still, too, we see your 
selfish, scheming guardian of the past fleeing from the 
wreck and ruin into which he has plunged your people. 
And we see your sworn champions in similar flight, 
leaving you forlorn, deserted. It is eminently womanly 
of you to defend those faithless gallants rather than 
solicit pity for yourself. It is the true maidenhood in 
you which makes you retire to your bower until you 
have forced us to acknowledge your value and earn 
your love. If we misjudged you, and fancied you had 
tripped out to put your hand in ours, it was only 



BITTER HATE FOR SWEETEST LOVE 151 

because we were so eager and so smitten. We like 
you better as you are, shy and modest, proud and 
pure. 

That deft touch of your pen upon the quality of our 
music — it was — I mean to say we find no fault in you 
for — but no, we may not be disloyal even to our pipes. 
It was the best we had to offer, and when better comes 
from home we fancy that even you will cease to barri- 
cade your pearly ears against it. We shall enjoy hear- 
ing Pan set your sighs to melody. We promise not to 
drive him away, and he shall ever play your songs just 
as he trills the lays of ever so many fair maidens who 
throng around our Queen, and who remember the 
chains she has stricken from their limbs, without for 
an instant forgetting the tradition which still knits 
each to her past and her kindred in as many distant 
lands. 

You speak of the " great honour " of our liking you. 
You extol our bravery. You admit our " tender mer- 
cies" and our love of order. You say you will not 
forget our courtesy to your people, or our modesty. 
You call us " the politest of polite men " — ah, dear little 
Afrikander belle, we treasure each word in each of those 
sentences. We cannot help taking heart of hope. If 
you can speak us so fair to-day, when the whispers 
of your old lover still sound in your ears, what may we 
may not expect in time to come ? We will not try to 
hurry your heart, but we warn you we shall melt it. 



152 BITTER HATE FOR SWEETEST LOVE 

For we love you, and there is no selfish prompting, 
no hope of mercenary gain in our affection. We love 
you because you are irresistible, even with your dim- 
pled little hand clenched, and perhaps partly because 
of the lightning that flashes from your pretty eyes. 

J. R. 



CHAPTER XVII 

WAR CORRESPONDENTS OF TO-DAY 

Although newspaper correspondents were no new 
factor in the South African War, some were of a sort 
to persist until they produced two great changes — one 
in the relations of correspondents and the military, and 
the other in the manner in which wars are to be re- 
ported. The war correspondent may be " the curse of 
modern armies," as Lord Wolseley has declared, but he 
will endure in British armies so long as Great Britain 
and her people are as wholly free as at present. That 
he will do a different work in the future, and must be 
drawn from a different grade in journalism, is very evi- 
dent. With the " war expert," or military specialist, 
in the editorial rooms at home, writing with a broader 
view of the field of war than any single reporter at the 
front can possibly obtain, we see one reason why the 
hide-bound, old-fashioned war correspondents must 
quickly step aside. 

Some correspondents are made welcome at the mess 
tables of the commanders, and to the intimate compan- 
ionship of the brightest men in the armies. Only 

153 



154 WAR CORRESPONDENTS OF TO-DAY 

think what that means to the newspapers who employ 
such men, and to their readers. Possibly a selection of 
censors for their fitness will follow — but one opens up 
a very wide subject when appointments for fitness are 
suggested in some armies. 

With this new method for satisfying the largest 
public must come the respect of the army for the cor- 
respondents, instead of its reluctantly granted toler- 
ance. 

Whether this Boer war has been peculiar in respect 
of the social and intellectual weight of the men sent 
from England to report it I do not know, but I do 
know that too many of the correspondents were, intel- 
lectually, as easy to beat as an egg — and too many 
were otherwise lacking. 

The attitude towards the Press of some censors, in 
the dreary days before Lord Roberts took command of 
all the forces, was such as to make the best journalistic 
work impossible, and the status of the correspondents 
insupportable to any who took pride in their calling or 
in their self-respect. 

I have no hesitation in repeating that in a large de- 
gree this was because so many correspondents were not 
such men as should have been sent to represent great 
newspapers ; therefore the editors who sent them were 
responsible for the difficulties which all the correspond- 
ents encountered. It is the editors who need to be 
educated and reformed rather than the military men. 



V/AR CORRESPONDENTS OF TO-DAY 155 

Of all the armies in the world, the British, as it is at 
present constituted, is the one to be the most par- 
ticular with in this regard. 

To send men whom it was impossible for the officers 
to regard as comrades, and men who would not hesi- 
tate to break the rules of the guild unless they were cer- 
tain of severe punishment, was a crime against the 
honour of the profession. It was to govern such men 
that the strictest of the censorship rules had to be made. 
The result was that the representatives of the dignity 
and honour of the profession were beset with limitations 
which carried with them both reproach and distrust, 
and crippled their work. To put the case in another way, 
there were correspondents at the front who would have 
been trusted to write whatever they desired, had it not 
been that there were other correspondents whose poor 
judgment, worse taste, and careless treatment of facts 
dragged the entire corps down to a low level. 

It is certain that the mere reporters of battles and 
military movements are now outclassed and antiquated. 
Men of broader grasp and more human and varied in- 
terests are to report the next British wars. To obtain 
the reports which the public demands will ensure the 
appointment of correspondents who will insist upon 
respectful treatment and liberal regulations by the 
censors. Thus we shall have a pen-and-ink millennium 
automatically produced. The public will cease to be 
bored by accounts of troops for ever being " moved two 



156 WAR CORRESPONDENTS OF TO-DAY • 

miles to the north-east of the enemy's right flank " ; 
the more discerning editors will see their readers mul- 
tiply by leaps and bounds, the correspondents will be 
liberated from an odious bondage, and the military 
mind will broaden, until the army echoes the sagacious 
words of Lord Roberts, " The more you criticise, the 
more I shall learn of what mistakes are being made." 

I cannot hdp thinking that the broad attitude of the 
Field-Marshal must have much effect in bringing about 
this millennium. He gave all liberty and no licence to 
the newspaper writers, only insisting that they should 
submit to censorship whatever they meant to telegraph. 
This was wise and necessary because there might be 
*' leakages " all along the wires, and, again, whatever 
was cabled to England was certain to be cabled back to 
the Boers if it was news of importance to them. " Go 
where you please," said he, " write what you like, crit- 
icise whenever you feel like it, because the more you 
criticise the more I shall learn." To put trust in, and 
responsibility upon men in that way was certain to 
increase their self-respect ; and to have it understood 
that instant expulsion would follow any flagrant breach 
of decorum, or the rules of the censor, was quickly 
seen to have good effect upon those who had leaned 
towards offensiveness in various ways. 

I once said that it was not necessary for a war cor- 
respondent to incur danger on the battle-field. I have 
altered that opinion. It makes me laugh at myself 



WAR CORRESPONDENTS OF TO-DAY 157 

when I put side by side the view I then held and the 
experience I have since gained. 

I had been on the edge of the Chino-Japanese war, 
in which the Japanese got tremendous fame upon a 
very slender and dubious basis ; and I had followed 
the Turks in their promenade into Greece : but I did 
not then fully realise that these were not real wars. 
When we come to consider the relations of a corre- 
spondent to a real war, perhaps the experience of a 
certain talented artist will serve to illustrate them 
better than any other case that I can state. He was 
simply an artist — not a soldier or a seeker after martial 
glory — anxious only to see what effective situations 
each battle might contain or create. Nothing was 
further from his desire than to serve as a target for 
Boer rifle-fire. In saying this I do not mean to belittle 
him. I shared with him his sensible ambition to see 
all he could, and meet with as little danger as possible. 

He succeeded at Belmont, but at the battle of 
Graspan, after establishing himself in a nice, safe, and 
commanding position, he found himself, in half an 
hour, amid such a hail of bullets that it seemed as if 
all Boerdom had singled him out as a mark for its 
concentrated desire for slaughter. He lay still with 
becoming dignity, and found himself alive at the end 
of the fight — alive, and resolved, with all the strength 
of his will, never again, while he lived, to mix his body 
up with flying bullets. At Modder River, in some 



158 WAR CORRESPONDENTS OF TO-DAY 

manner which I have forgotten, he was suddenly pur- 
sued by shells and flying shrapnel, and made his way 
out of that danger, only to find himself under such 
Mauser fire that the bullets came in ropes. It was fun 
to hear him talk about the duty of correspondents 
after this second experience. To begin with, his was 
a round, chubby face, lit by steady, grave eyes, and he 
had a way of merely mentioning his own experiences, 
incidentally, with a gravity too droll to be either de- 
scribed in words or listened to without merriment. He 
canvassed the corps of correspondents at short inter- 
vals, and reported to each one that all the rest were 
resolved with him never to get under fire again. 

And then came the fight at Maaghersfontein. There 
was the advance in black and rainy night, then the 
greyish threat of dawn, then the hellish fusillade from 
the Boer trenches at the Highlanders, only a few rifle- 
lengths away. After that the panic, the confusion 
confounded, the awful dropping of scores upon scores 
of dead men, the reeling of ever so many wounded, 
the stampede to the rear, the shouting of the officers 
trying to restore order. And, finally, there was the 
artist, tousled, mud-stained, breathless, but still with 
the same round, cherubic face, and the same grave, 
well-considered speech. He was coming out of the 
jaws of death. He had been in the thick of the hell 
which, for a minute or two, daunted the tigers of the 
British army. 



WAR CORRESPONDENTS OF TO-DAY 159 

" You see," said he, in his most matter-of-fact way, 
" I was attached to one of the Highland regiments, 
and when we advanced this morning I went along 
with my battalion. It was bitter cold and raining, and 
it was too dark for me to grope about by myself, so I 
meant to advance with the rest until we got near the 
front, and then let them go ahead while I found a 
good vantage-ground for myself, out of danger. All 
of a sudden, as I was marching along in the very front, 
a streak of fire burst before us as if out of the earth. 
We were attacked, and in a trap. Men fell all around 
me. There was a stampede, and I ran with the others. 
The worst of it was that I was wearing my spurs, and 
the men kept stepping on them and throwing me down. 
When I was down they trampled upon me ; and, as 
fast as I got up, I was thrown down again. And all 
the time the bullets were coming like stones in a hail- 
storm." 

His case proves how wrong I was to assert that a 
correspondent need not endanger his life on the battle- 
field. And yet, I am informed that the artist man- 
aged to keep out of danger after Maaghersfontein. 
If this be true, the point of his example cuts both 
ways. 

I know another man of great merit in all that makes 
an accomplished and modest gentleman, who went 
about his duty soberly and thoroughly, facing danger 
whenever it could not be properly avoided, and never 



i6o WAR CORRESPONDENTS OF TO-DAY 

admitting, by word or hint or shrug, that he gave it a 
thought. Where thousands upon thousands were val- 
orous, he was accounted the peer of the bravest. After 
months of campaigning, he took ill of what was termed 
a slow African fever, but it seemed to me beyond 
doubt that his malady was pure nervous prostration. 
He was too sensitive and imaginative to look on at the 
business of fighting and slaughter. Though he owned 
the bodily' strength to endure hunger, thirst, and ex- 
posure to sun, frost, and prolonged wettings, his nerves 
were too fine for the strain to which they were put. 
The death of several warm friends, the sufferings of 
men all around him, and the riot of his imagination 
when he walked steadily and coolly in and out of many 
battles, all proved too much for his nerves, too revolt- 
ing to his fine nature. 

Certain correspondents were complimented as per- 
haps no others have been in any previous war, or by 
any other general. These four were Mr. Percival 
Landon, of the Times ; Mr. H. A. Gwynne, of Ren- 
ter's Agency ; Mr. F. W. Buxton, of the Boer-sup- 
pressed Johannesburg Star ; and myself. We were 
asked to undertake, as a committee of the war corre- 
spondents, the editorship and control of all the depart- 
ments of a daily newspaper for such time as the army 
remained in Bloemfontein. 

The ultra-Boer organ, the Bloemfontein Express, 
had been stopped, and we continued the issues of its 



WAR CORRESPONDENTS OF TO-DAY i6i 

rival, then known as " The Friend of the Free State," 
a title at once simplified as " The Friend^ 

There never was, within my knowledge, a newspaper 
so full of typographical errors and of poetry — either 
real or so-called. Our Boer compositors contributed 
the mistakes, and Tommy Atkins sent us the rhymes. 
In the ease with which he pumped his muse, and the 
abundance of the results, we early came to know that 
the British army is an organised host of poets — or at 
least of aspirants who are in the condition of the tiny 
child to whom the magistrate exclaimed, " is it possible 
that you are already a thief ? " and who modestly replied, 
" no your worship, but I 'opes to be." So deeply has 
Mr. Kipling stirred the Tommy's heart with those 
verses which treat of or appeal to the soldier that — not 
to exaggerate ridiculously — one fancies that every tenth 
man in the ranks aspires to be regarded as a disciple 
of this inspired and inspiring master. The ordinary 
Tommy poem was one thing when it came to us, a bet- 
ter thing sometimes when it left us — in the hands of 
Kruger, the office-boy — and still another thing when 
the "proof" came back from the hands of the Boer 
type-setters. 

Despite its whimsicalities, The Friend was a dignified 
newspaper, and very nearly a complete one. The larg- 
est daily circulation of any Bloemfontein newspaper 
had been 400 copies, but we regularly sold 5,000 
to 5,500 copies daily. Had we known that we should 

IX 



i62 WAR CORRESPONDENTS OF TO-DAY 

conduct the paper during an entire month (March i6 
to April 1 6, 1900), we could have sold at least 10,000 
copies a day by sending the papers in carts to the 
outer camps on the veldt. We published Renter's 
telegrams from all over the world, and the Capetown 
Argus's tidings of what went on in South Africa. 

Mr. Gwynne contributed a notable series of articles 
on the military lessons of the war, and these provoked 
other articles by professional experts. We were per- 
mitted to act as spokesmen for Great Britain and the 
army, using our own ideas and language, in explaining 
to the Boers the future policy of their conquerors, and 
In cautioning them not to overstrain the imperial incli- 
nation to magnanimity for the enemy and leniency 
towards rebels. Rudyard Kipling made the paper in- 
dispensable and all but priceless to those who collect 
his first editions. He wrote several poems, a series of 
" Fables for the Staff," and some very delightful 
" Kopje-book Maxims," to which also Mr. Landon 
contributed. Dr. Conan Doyle wrote for us, and so 
did Lord Stanley, who came every day to vise our 
proofs, the while we frolicked and caused him to mar- 
vel how and when and where we did that work, in 
" proofs " of which we buried him arms-deep. James 
Barnes, another American correspondent, was a con- 
tributor, and on one day, when all the editors rode off 
to see a battle, he most kindly remained behind and 
got out the paper. Mortimer Mempes and W. B. 



WAR CORRESPONDENTS OF TO-DAY 163 

WoUen, the artists, General Sir Henry E. Colvile, Li- 
onel James, and Bennet Burleigh also contributed, and 
we were proud to introduce to our particular public 
two uncommonly clever writers, Captain Cecil Lowther, 
of the Scots Guards, and A. B. Patterson, an Australian 
journalist — both humorists, one in prose and the other 
in verse. 

One of the editors (it was the writer of this true his- 
tory), fascinated by the beauty of Bloemfontein, and 
gulled into the belief that all the people in it were glad 
to see the army here, addressed a love-letter to the 
bowery little city as if it were a beautiful girl. He 
called her " Miss Bloemfontein." He asked her to let 
him look into the heavenly blue of her eyes, and hold 
her dimpled hand, and that sort of lover-like sentiment. 
Ods Bobs ! there came to the office of The Friend next 
day a letter from a real Miss Bloemfontein — a pro-Boer 
girl — telling him that it was a coquette and flirt, called 
Miss Uitlander, who had been looking into his eyes 
and allowing herself to be caressed. She said that if 
he looked into the true Miss Bloemfontein's eyes he 
would find bolts of lightning in their blueness, and if 
he sought for her hand he would find it clenched. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 

The Kornespruit or Sanna's Post affair will always 
appear to me the most extraordinary and dramatic 
feature of the war while I was with either Lord 
Methuen's or Lord Roberts's armies. I spent many 
days in cross-examining all whom I could find who took 
part in it, and gathered facts sufficient to construct an 
account, perhaps the fullest and clearest of all that were 
sent home, and a fitting text for a disquisition upon 
valour^-for this fight exemplifies the character and 
quality of the courage of the British soldier better than 
any that has taken place since the war in the Crimea. 

" I have not known," I wrote, " precisely how to rate 
British valour. I have seen that it is the first of its 
kind. I have had many opportunities to judge it. It 
has shown itself in every engagement they have had 
with the Boers, sometimes too brilliantly to be en- 
trusted to English for description, often successfully, 
always tellingly. 

" But what does it make for, how does it count in 

war? Remember that the Boer has never shown a 
164 



VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 165 

trace of that quality, and yet he has made many a 
good battle, and we account him a good fighting man. 

" If we analyse the fighting qualities of the Briton 
and the Boer, we find that the Briton is always ready 
to rush upon death, while the Boer as religiously avoids 
risking his life more than the greatest caution leaves 
necessary. Shall we, then, say that valour is accom- 
panied by the unnecessary slaughter of those who . 
possess it ? It has often seemed so. Grant this, admit 
that many an Englishman now lying under the surface 
of the veldt would have * lived to fight another day ' had 
he been less brave, what is there left to say for valour — 
pure, unreasoning, dashing valour ? " 

I know that the men who possess it will read this 
with impatience. They do not admit that the value of 
this quality is debatable. They belong to a race which 
has always enjoyed and valued it, and they despise 
those who have missed it, just as they despise those 
who boast of it — for they are so certain of it among 
themselves that they never allude to it except in praise 
of an enemy. But we must speak of it in discussing 
this war because it was one of the two most important 
elements, in the earlier part of the conflict, on the 
British side. Those two were the bad generalship of 
incompetent commanders, and the extraordinary 
courage by which their men either veiled or glorified 
their generals* mistakes. 

We must discuss it as we discuss the consequences of 



i66 VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 

equipping an army with long-range magazine rifles, or 
with lyddite shells, or with smokeless powder. The 
proper rating of valour in battle is surely as well worth 
looking into as the worth of these other equipments. 
I have suggested that the Briton regards valour as a 
regulation accompaniment, like his body or his 
weapons. I think I can say how the Boer, who has 
never known the feeling of it, found himself regarding 
the quality after five months of fighting on that western 
side of the continent. 

He is a hunter rather than a warrior. His game is 
to lie in hiding and kill whatever comes in front of 
him — and to run the moment his own skin is threat- 
ened. 

At Belmont and Graspan he discovered that whereas 
deer either die or run away, the British ran at him. 
Therefore he ceased to hide behind rocks, and took to 
a campaign of surprises, traps, and ambushes. He dug 
trenches below the surface and hid in the grass, con- 
centrating such numbers that either the first volley or 
his continuous volleys would hold back even the ex- 
traordinary valour which disregarded the death of 
many, so long as life maintained itself in a few. At 
Belmont and Graspan he was surprised and jolted out 
of his lairs by this valour, but, with his accustomed 
fox-like cunning, he thereafter counted upon this 
quality in his foes, and made it serve his deadly purpose 
by leading his victims into pitfalls. 



VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 167 

I saw this long ago, and it was when I first saw it 
that I began to ask myself, in cold blood, what is its 
value in war ? We are not speaking of plain courage 
— but of this extraordinary kind or degree of valour 
that the British troops display. Of course, one cannot 
do without courage — at least, only the Boer can, and he 
can do so only because he inhabits a country made to 
suit him — or which has made him to suit it ; a country 
in which there is a natural fortress for every square mile. 
The German has a reliable, staying, dogged courage. 
The Frenchman has a brilliant courage at the call of a 
leader he trusts. The Turk was my ideal of a soldier 
up to last year because he unites with the German sort 
of courage a belief that to be killed in battle is to earn 
a harem in heaven, and a seat in a first-class carriage 
on the way. Compare any kinds of courage with the 
utter absence of it in the Greek, and we see by the 
record of the Turco-Greek contest that courage is an 
essential in war. 

But British valour is a different thing. It often 
seems a rushing into, and a defiance of, certain death. 
It recks nothing, avoids nothing, considers nothing. It 
imbues an entire regiment, brigade, army — driving on 
commander, colonel, captain, corporal, and private all 
alike. It has won all round the globe. It succeeds very 
often. It sometimes takes the place of strategy, it dis- 
counts enormous odds against itself ; at times it upsets 
failure at the last moment, transforming it to success. 



i68 VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 

It must, therefore, be of great value ; but in judging of 
that we must take into account the cost of it — and its 
cost in human lives is very great indeed. 

These have been my thoughts for months. This has 
been puzzling me. I have not yet solved the question 
of the difference between its cost and its profits, as any 
merchant would insist upon doing before he would 
either make or deal in it. I have come to the conclusion 
that I would not go into a war without it, but that 
may be because I am Anglo-Saxon — and prejudiced. 
Therefore, I must leave the discussion of its actual value 
to others ; not to military men, of course, because they 
all persist in thinking it a fine possession beyond all 
compare or question. 

The words of a military attache, sent here by a na- 
tion which loves England none too well, will illustrate 
this. 

'* I always thought the Turk was the finest soldier in 
the world," said he ; " but — leaving out the cavalry, 
which have not done so well — I shall always say that 
there is no other army to compare with the British. 
For courage, dash, staying power, discipline, and all 
that makes for success with an army there is no other 
l,ike it." 

" ril tell you how you must consider it," said a 
British officer ; ''you must note what it brings in its 
train. You must observe how cool in danger are the 
men who possess it. You must observe how modestly 



VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 169 

they bear their own share of it, and how prone they 
are to praise it in their comrades. And when you 
consider it practically — as a commercial man would — 
you must remember that the Boer gets along without 
it only because he fights on the defensive — and a de- 
fensive policy never yet won a war. If he had valour 
he would have done us infinite damage. And, sooner 
or later, when he is driven back to his last corner, he 
must show valour or he must lose the game." 

The material for the best exposition of this high 
quality which this war has provided is an account of 
the fight at Kornespruit — with which no engagement 
that has taken place can compare in richness of exam- 
ples of this much-prized force. 

I might well begin with Colonel Pilcher's visit to 
Ladybrand with thirty-five men of the loth Hussars. 
There he was welcomed by the tricky Boers, and enter- 
tained with lavish protestations of friendship. He 
arrested the landdrost, and then heard that thousands 
of Boers were near by waiting to attack his little band. 
He gave the order to retire, and instantly the false- 
hearted people of the place opened fire from windows, 
doors, and walls — but he got off with the landdrost, and 
did more injury than he suffered. He was in General 
Broadwood's command, which was centred at Thaba 
N'chu. He found Broadwood aware of the massing of 
many thousand Boers. The considerable transport of 
the force (of about 2,000 men) was ordered to retire 



170 VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 

in advance to Bloemfontein, while the combatants 
guarded the neck leading to the valley in which Thaba 
N'chu lies. This was before sunset. 

Broadwood had heard that another troop of Boers 
was coming down from Brandfort to join the Lady- 
brand force, and he sent word to General Roberts, ap- 
prising him of his plight. The Field-Marshal sent out 
a sufficient support, but the distance from Bloemfon- 
tein gave an advantage to the Boers. In Broadwood's 
little army were 200 Life Guards, 200 of the lOth Hus- 
sars, under Colonel Pilcher ; Alderson's Brigade of 
Mounted Infantry, consisting of the first regiment, the 
third regiment, the Burmese regiment, and two weak 
squadrons of Rimington's Tigers and Roberts's Horse. 
With part of this force Broadwood fought a small 
rearguard action from noon until night, holding back 
the Boers as he imagined. At nine o'clock at night he 
marched his men out of the Thaba N'chu valley and 
caught up with his convoy at half-past two o'clock in 
the morning at the waterworks across the Modder, two 
hours after the waggons had outspanned there. 

All had passed some hills 3,000 yards behind their 
place of bivouac, and from one of these came shells at 
daybreak, awakening them. This attack changed to 
his front what he had considered his rear, and, as every 
general would do, he ordered his convoy on — that is to 
say behind, towards Bloemfontein. He sent Roberts's 
Horse with the waggons as an escort, and with these 



VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 171 

he also despatched batteries Q and U of the Royal 
Horse Artillery. Quickly the animals were inspanned 
and started off, while the main body of the combatants 
faced about to get into touch with the enemy. 

Then came the tragedy — the completest trap — the 
greatest surprise — the most dramatic coup and the 
cleverest bit of Boer work — in this war. The Boers 
were in large force behind Broadwood as well as in 
front. While he had retreated from Thaba N'chu a 
large number had doubled on him and taken up an in- 
visible position on his road to Bloemfontein. He heard ' 
heavy firing on the convoy behind him. A ridge or 
slight rise prevented him from seeing its source ; but 
he grasped its import, and sent Captain Chester Master, 
of Rimington's Tigers, back to find a way out of what 
he knew to be a trap into which his force had fallen. 

Now, let us follow the convoy. It had escaped the 
early morning shell fire against the troops. The animals 
were quickly inspanned, and the long line of waggons 
was trekking over a nearly flat treeless prairie with the 
usual view, on all sides, of a deadly monotonous veldt. 
Ahead was a slight rise like a soft swell of the sea. 
You would not have noticed it, though it served to hide 
from Broadwood what was about to happen beyond it. 
The waggons came first to a little spruit or nearly dry 
stream-bed, and the place they had to choose for a 
crossing brought them into the shell fire. The feet of 
the hundreds of animals churned up the soft bottom 



172 VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 

into a mire, and seven waggons stuck there. Captain 
Atcherley, of the A.S.C., summoned help of about forty 
men of Roberts's Horse, who stayed until it was use- 
less to stay longer, dismounted, with their arms stacked, 
tugging at the waggons in a vain endeavour to shift 
them. Every man of these was a hero, for none of their 
lives was worth a pin. They took their inspiration 
from the exclamations of one of their officers, who kept 
on shouting, *' Do not leave a pennyworth to the 
d d Boers." 

In the meantime the rest of the long train had gone 
on, over this slight rise beyond the first or little spruit 
to the Kornespruit, the larger of the two spruits, and 
the place of extraordinary disaster. Here were hidden 
Boer riflemen in four tiers commanding the spruit and 
the veldt so completely that they could comb them 
both with shot. The first tier was on the farther bank 
of the spruit. The second, third, and fourth tiers were 
hidden behind the stone walls of a double cattle kraal 
built tiltingly on the slope beyond the spruit. The 
leading waggon in the long convoy was Captain Atcher- 
ley's Scotch cart. It went safely down the spruit and 
nearly across the drift. Several large buck waggons 
followed it. 

They had no reason to suspect the truth, which was 
that seven hundred Boers were almost close enough to 
breathe in their faces. Out from their shelter came a 
few who, like Piccadilly policemen handling a blockade, 



VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 173 

advanced, holding up their hands and saying, " Stop ! 
you are surrounded. You can do nothing. Drive 
there " ; or they said, " Drive over there" ; or " There 
— go on until we tell you to stop." The negro drivers 
did as they were told. Such soldiers as were on the 
carts had thrown their rifles behind them — as they 
generally do — and these they gave up when ordered to. 

There is always a succession of stoppages when a 
convoy is crossing a drift. It must be so, because the 
pace slows in ascending the further side. Thus, with 
a number of delays, the waggons came thumping, 
jouncing, and bumping down into the little ravine, and 
the Boers rode up and disclosed themselves in little 
companies, crying out that it was " all up — no use 
fighting," and demanding their rifles of the soldiers on 
the waggons. 

In the meantime Roberts's Horse were riding up to 
take their place in the line, when they were met by a 
conductor of the A.S.C., who had turned in the spruit 
and ridden back without being stopped or fired at. 
" For Heaven's sake ! " he shouted, " go back. There 
are Boers there." The answer he got was, '* Don't be 
a fool," and they advanced. Immediately a native 
driver came back at full speed, shouting : " The Boers 
are here ! Boers ! Boers ! " Not a shot had yet been 
fired. 

This was taking place on the right of the convoy. 
On the left the two batteries came along, and, finding a 



174 VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 

crush, went around, outside the waggons, to see what 
was going on ahead. In the spruit a cook of the 
Household Cavalry had dashed his rifle at the pit of a 
Boer's stomach, but still no shot was fired. U Battery- 
leading the way down into the spruit, alongside the 
convoy, reached the scene just as the Boers rose in 
great numbers, crying out in good English, " Give up ! 
We've got you covered," and the like. 

And now came the cloudburst of shot. 

A serjeant-major of the Army Service Corps pro- 
voked it. He gave up his rifle on demand, but when 
he was handing over his revolver he clapped it to the 
head of his Boer captor and shot him dead. Then the 
Boers loosed all their rifles with a fire that cannot be 
described — a blasting, terrible fire — one so thick that 
those who stood against it say they cannot understand 
how any man got away. The Mauser bullets flew like 
ropes of lead from near at hand upon those in the 
spruit, and just as thickly across the veldt, where 
many of the troops and the main body of the convoy 
were. 

The panic which followed was like a bit of Bedlam. 
It was mainly a stampede of the horses and mules 
which could not be restrained. Those who were well 
back on the veldt saw more riderless horses than they 
had ever seen in battle before. They saw a gun of 
U Battery without a man near it being swung right 
and left along the veldt, and buck waggons, cavalry, 



VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 175 

a mounted infantry horse, limbers, and everything 
imaginable beside, in front of and behind it. Men too 
were dropping in their tracks, and falling from their 
saddles, while in the foreground stood Q Battery, all 
but deserted by its men. 

The Boers were shooting across the British in the 
spruit and killing each other. They shot a refugee 
mother and baby on one of the carts. It seemed as if 
nothing could escape their bullets. They endeavoured 
to be just, and ordered to one side the men of U Bat- 
tery, who had been obliged to surrender. If ever the 
human eye and ear anticipated the horrors of hell it 
was there and then. Two Tommies hiding under a 
waggon were joined by a Boer. They dragged him 
between them, and pommelled him senseless. A gun- 
ner, surrounded in the spruit, drew his sword and cut 
one Boer down — then he wounded another, and then 
he was shot. The serjeant-major of U Battery, who 
had been parleying with the Boers when the firing be- 
gan, cantered out of the spruit, and joined the other 
battery in safety. 

Major Phipps-Hornby and his men, of Q Battery 
assembled on the rise in the face of the awful fire, and 
then went back still facing the fire, to the edge of the 
spruit, and secured their guns. They were able to 
get four of them. These and the one gun of U 
Battery, which escaped from the spruit, made up a 
battery of five guns. These were actually trained on 



176 VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 

the Boers, and fired for a longtime at i,ooo yards — a 
distance at which the Boer rifles were as effective as if 
they were fired at arm's length. Gunners and officers 
dropped, but those who were not hit kept on firing. 
The tin houses were on a rise of ground. Behind 
this rise was a drift across the small or first spruit. 
Toward this drift raced all the panic-stricken horses, 
and it was here that the men began to control the ani- 
mals, and discipline was brought with a violent effort 
out of chaos. All over the veldt was the mad disorder 
of a stampeding convoy and the steeds of soldiers. 
The confusion in the drift was awful. Horses and 
waggons ran other horses and waggons down. But 
at last order came out of it all. 

In the meantime we have left part of the convoy 
and all of Roberts's Horse in the heart of the drench- 
ing rain of bullets. Major Dawson, commanding the 
Horse, heard the order to surrender, and replied, 
simply, '' Files about. Gallop ! " This is also the time 
when persistent rumour says that the men who had 
surrendered in the spruit were shot by the Boers. I 
believe this is wholly false. As I have said, the pris- 
oners were told to stand aside, and those who were 
shot suffered as everybody did — even many of the Boers 
themselves — from a cross fire in great part coming 
from an unfinished railway enbankment on the Boer 
right. 

It was then that General Broadwood came over the 



VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 177 

ridge with all his command to begin as gallant a fight 
as is recorded in any annals. Shelled from behind and 
raked by rifle-fire in front, on the right, and on the right 
rear, at 1,000 yards, with men and horses falling, with 
Boers shooting Boers, with everybody else in the direst, 
maddest confusion, this little British force remained 
under perfect discipline defending itself in the open 
against the murderous fire of a hidden three to one. 
Under these circumstances, Broadwood carried out as 
brilliant a retirement as human brain and nerve could 
devise and execute. There is not a man who was with 
Broadwood on that day who is not willing to follow 
him anywhere — even to the Inferno, if the Boers do not 
give up when they are driven there. 

The four guns which escaped the worst fate in the 
first surprise were called on to cover the retirement of 
the mounted men, and to try to recover the two they 
were obliged to abandon. The men of the battery 
were only a few tatters of the original body— a skeleton, 
a dismembered, crippled thing. But what men were 
left sat bolt upright through the tempest of lead, rigid, 
soldierly, without a sign of what they had experienced, 
or of what they knew lay before them. They turned, 
faced the position of their disaster, and opened fire 
against five Boer long-range guns and two pompoms, 
whose missiles seemed to fall in the middle of their 
little force nearly the whole time. At last Colonel 
Alderson's Mounted Infantry Regiment was able tQ 

13 



1/8 VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 

retire and, these being the last, the guns also retired. 
Disdaining to gallop, or even to trot, they walked their 
horses away under that infernal downpour of shells 
and raking of Mauser bullets. 

The Burmese Mounted Infantry, Major Cruikshank 
in command, formed up at the front edge of the rise, 
and gave the Boers shot in streams like molten lead. 
The New Zealand Mounted Rifles did as well in cover- 
ing the first line of the retiring force. Dismounting 
and putting their mounts under cover, they blazed 
away at the Boers — standing out in the open and in the 
worst of the fire — as if they were defying the death 
that kept searching the whole veldt with its snaky 
fingers. 

When General Broadwood learned the facts he felt, 
as did every other soldier there, that all were trapped, 
and that there might be no way out. To surrender 
occurred to no man in that great band of heroes. To 
find a way out and, failing that to die, was the single 
idea common to all. Broadwood came into the vortex 
of the battle and stampede and brought his command 
to order, and then to safety. He sent the cavalry and 
some mounted infantry across the Kornespruit to the 
right of the Boer position, to flank and enfilade them. 
He arranged for the covering of his retirement with 
guns and riflemen — and he got his force away quickly, 
and with the least loss of life that was possible in a 
situation which seemed to offer escape to no one. He 



VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 179 

deserves the thanks and praises of his countrymen for 
the coolness, the intrepidity, and the skill with which 
he thus saved five-sixths of his force. Had Colvile's 
large force, which was close at hand, come to his relief 
— even had he known that Bosmankop, lying in the line 
of his retirement, was in British hands, he would have 
got back his seven guns. 

For a week I collected instances of valour on the 
part of humbler individuals in this fight. At the end 
I was overwhelmed by their number. 

To mention merely the notable cases would be to 
take up a page of a daily newspaper. It would be to 
gazette a quarter of the participants in the dramatic 
adventure. There's the daring of Major Hornby, of Q 
Battery ; the reckless bravery of Major Taylor and of 
Sergeant-Major Martin of the U Battery ; the magnifi- 
cent coolness of Major Cruikshank, in rounding up his 
Burmese troopers ; the daring of the commander of the 
New Zealanders ; the reckless bravery of the sergeant- 
major of U Battery; the splendid bearing of Colonel 
Pilcher, fresh from death's jaws at Ladybrand ; the 
nerve of the major, captain, and subaltern of Roberts's 
Horse, who stopped twenty minutes under shell-fire to 
help out the stranded waggons ; the self-effacement of 
Captain Foster, A.S.C., who went across the bullet- 
searched veldt, back to the waterworks, to burn the 
forage that was left there, so that the Boers should not 
have it ; of Captain Vignolles, of Roberts's Horse, and 



i8o VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED 

of his men, who refused to go on when his charger was 
shot under him ; of Trooper Murphy and Sergeant 
Collins, of that same command who seemed made of 
solid pluck in the thick of danger ; of Trooper Todd, 
of Roberts's Horse, who went back to the spruit to 
search for a wounded comrade, and searched far and 
wide, while the Boers did their best to kill him ; of 
Captain St. Leger, of the 1 8th Royal Irish (M.I.), and 
his corporal. Hall, and a bugler, all of whom forgot 
themselves while saving others. But there are entire 
commands that are as deserving of mention — and scores 
of individuals as well, who must forgive me for leaving 
them out. 

A man on the field at the time told me that it was 
wonderful to note how each man who was asked what 
he knew was sure to tell of the heroism of some other 
man. I find it so to-day. If I ask officer or soldier 
for his story, he replies that what he did was nothing, 
but that I ought to know what some one else did. 
But to the " men in England now abed," who know 
not the thrill and quiver of the fighting spirit^if many 
such there be — the still more wondrous thing is this : 
that there is not a man who came out of that trap 
alive who did not long to get at the Boers again and 
quickly. 

A Boer, speaking after the fight, said to my very 
able comrade, H. A. Giognne : *' The whole force of 
Boers was touched with admiration of the splendid be- 



VALOUR GLORIOUSLY FRAMED i8i 

haviour of your troops. We looked upon that force of 
Broadwood's as finished, and I confess, if it had been 
a Boer force, it would have given up its arms." 

This, then, is British valour. Is the reader able to 
judge by these examples of it what its commercial 
value is, what it weighs in the scales against what it 
costs ? In this case it saved a little army because prac- 
tically every man in that army possessed it. In other 
cases it has lost nearly as heavily. 

Can any one, then, strike the balance ? 



CHAPTER XIX 

"FAIR WOMEN AND BRAVE MEN" 

During a little lull, on April 6th, while nothing was 
going on immediately around us, I sent home a letter 
dealing with our infrequent and faint acquaintanceship 
with the gentler sex while we had been in the war. 

There had been breaks in the monotony of exposure 
and hardship now and then during this time. We war 
correspondents enjoyed them more (and more of them) 
than the soldiers, but I hope it is not immodest to say 
that we tried to share those crumbs to comfort with 
our friends among the officers. 

We did not fully realise it at the time, but the few 

weeks we spent on " the Island " in the Modder made 

a precious season. We hired a little mud-made hotel 

among the dwarf mimosas and there we slept in actual 

beds, and broke open our boxes of provisions to be 

cooked in a real kitchen, and served on a genuine dining- 

table, with crockery and glasses and knives, forks, and 

spoons. The walls and roof of the dining-room were 

peppered with bullet holes, and a shell had torn through 

one side and smashed one door, as if it had been run 

into by a railway engine. 
182 



" FAIR WOMEN AND BRAVE MEN " 183 

Ah, dear friends at home (I wrote), if you could 
know how palatial all this seemed — not only to us, but 
to the noble lords and sons of dukes who came as our 
guests ! How we enjoyed those iron cots, though the 
bedding took on a khaki-coloured blush for never 
being changed ! If you could understand how proud 
we were of sleeping within four walls, in rooms whose 
floor was only a sort of flour of crumbling cow-dung 
and dirt ! If you could have heard how enthusiastically 
even generals expressed their envy of us — then 
you would begin to know how hard and rough and 
dirty a time your country's defenders have been 
having. 

You would appreciate it better if you could have 
sat with us on our ** real chairs " and looked over the 
river at Methuen's army. It was for ever 'whelmed 
by " dust devils " that licked up the floury surface of the 
hot, bare earth and blew it through the tents, through 
every khaki uniform, into the lungs and stomach, and 
the food and drink of every man. 

There was a piano in the tin-roofed dining-room — at 
least it had the outward looks and a few of the inward 
sounds of a piano. This proved magnet enough for 
those in whose hearts music dwelt, and they came 
to it from as far as Klokfontein and Maaghersfontein. 
When we had enjoyed a good tinned dinner, with 
fresh onions to glorify it, and then found one among 
us who could hammer a tune out of the piano, how 



184 ''FAIR WOMEN AND BRAVE MEN" 

fortunate and happy we felt ! Indeed, nothing seemed 
lacking — except the presence of woman. 

He whose visits we most enjoyed was Captain Ken- 
neth Macdonald, A.S.C., who seemed to us to sing like 
an angel — and to be almost as good as one in other 
ways. General Pole-Carew used to try to outstay the 
moon with us, sometimes, when " Mac " was loosing 
song-birds from his throat, this dashing and debonair 
general came and took the other half of our hotel with 
his staff. We grew to be his devotees — as all of the 
Guards Brigade are — so alert and keen a soldier is he, 
so neat and smart at all times, and so unceasingly good 
at heart. He is one of those small packages into 
which Mars puts his best lieutenants. 

Nothing seemed lacking except the presence of 
woman. And the day was to come when we were to 
see a woman — after months of wondering whether they 
really were as we remembered them — or whether the 
entire sex was not a dream, a thing only to be met 
with in fairy books. To be sure, we saw many Kaffir 
women, built far out with rounding additions in many 
places, like modern battleships. But they could not 
remind us of the ladies we used to know — was it years 
ago ? — in London. 

One day we were having " sports " on the camp 
ground of our 13,000 men. Crowds of us — dusty, 
dirty, stained things in khaki — were crowded on both 
sides of the race track, and round the extremely dirty 



"FAIR WOMEN AND BRAVE MEN*' 185 

person who was giving us a tight rope show. Our 
noses were peeled, our cheeks were hung with skin- 
tatters like the bark of a gum tree, our lips were 
seamed with cracks. Great Scott ! how disreputable 
we looked — and how you would have cheered us if we 
had marched past you on the Embankment ! 

All of a sudden a Cape cart was driven up, and out 
stepped an elderly man and a young lady. She was 
all in white, except for her blue blouse and black 
boots, and the few small flowers in her white straw 
hat. She was seventeen or eighteen — a country girl 
from Rosemead, near by — but of the very best type, 
slender and lithe as a fawn. She had light-brown hair, 
but the face of a pure blonde, with cheeks like " two 
handfuls of white cherries." Her eyes were precisely 
what you would have had them — light blue, large, a little 
timid, and a little mischievous. There are thousands 
of us who could describe every inch of what we saw of 
her ; though, after she appeared, we could not take 
any interest in the sports. 

The man on the wire might have fallen off and I 
should not have known it. I believe Captain Wright 
did win the best race, gallantly, but we did not see it. 
If I am not mistaken the Boers tossed a few shells 
into our lines ; but what we saw was a girl's dimpled 
little hands, a girl's fairy eyes, a maiden's rosy lips, a 
pair of ridiculous little Cinderella boots that we could 
put in one of our pockets. Thirteen thousand of us 



iS6 '^FAIR WOMEN AND BRAVE MEN** 

looked at her, sidewise, discreetly — just as one looks at 
a sweet-faced young nun. Then she went away and 
we went on eating sanded food, or marching and fight- 
ing without food, sleeping on the veldt in cold rains, 
walking into gusts of bullets, dying, being wounded, 
taking enteric, baking and caking in the sun and dust. 
But through it all we knew that it is no dream that 
women did exist — for we had seen one. 

A few of us have since been in Kimberley, and have 
seen ladies in the streets, have seen cosy little homes 
from which the tinkling of pianos has sounded, and 
have observed here and there a lady at a window, or in 
a garden among the flowers. That does not seem much 
to tell about, does it? And yet we do tell of it, and 
think of it, and prize it very highly. Still more of us 
were at Bloemfontein, where there were girls behind 
the counters in the shops, and our Tommies bunched 
up together wherever there was a " she," and a great 
deal of talk went to and fro while they spent their 
little wages on whatever such a girl might have to 
sell. 

Why, the refinements and delicacy, the gentleness, 
the beauty, and the other charms which women now 
seem to us to monopolise in little widely-distant cor- 
ners of South Africa, have come to be more valued by 
us than you could easily believe. Let me set down a 
proof of this. There lives in a certain town a certain 
girl — and the girl and the town shall be nameless. 



"FAIR WOMEN AND BRAVE MEN" 187 

The girl stands behind the counter, is seventeen, and 
is rather free and merry, being good as gold as well. 
Envious women might call her flirtatious, and, if we 
men were at home, some of us might call her kitten- 
ish. The first of the army to enter the town made 
friends with her, and presently invited her to gather 
some girl friends and come into the country for a 
picnic. Two waggons were employed, and three se- 
date men, with more grey than they like in their hair, 
were the hosts. The chief among the girls invited a 
miss of twelve and a miss of sixteen, and the latter 
brought along her nine-year-old sister. All drove into 
the country to the home ' of the twelve-year-old girl, 
where out on the veldt the servants prepared the feast. 
There was roast fowl, Oxford sauage, preserved apricots, 
bread and butter, a plenty of grapes and champagne, 
soda and ginger beer. Out from the farmhouse rolled 
three chubby boys, whose years added together might 
have summed up a total of fifteen. 

They were joyfully welcomed, and crammed with 
food. The girls giggled and talked to each other in 
Dutch, then, growing much more at ease, began to 
propound childish riddles and conundrums. The 
three little urchins stuffed themselves as geese are 
stuffed for the fattening of their livers. Presently out 
came the six or seven dogs of the family, bent on getting 
their own good time. And then the father of Miss 
Twelve and two strapping farmer boys slouched out 



i88 *^FAIR WOMEN AND BRAVE MEN" 

and flung themselves down beside the others, to look 
on and listen. The gentlemen's servants hung about 
the outer edge of the little bunch of people on the 
grass, eagerly attending to the simple prattle of the 
girls. 

It does seem a strange situation — the three polished 
men of the world, to whom the world is already a trifle 
stale ; the giggling, rustic maidens who realised that 
their position was peculiar, yet could not say why ; the 
purely animal dogs and little boys — all stomachs and 
joy — and the masculine farmer folk looking on as we of 
the big world sit in a theatre and look on at the play. 
But as the three soiled campaigners saw the situation 
it was scented by the aroma of home, illumined by 
miniature suggestions of the women they loved — 
and it was a change from battle and hardship to calm 
and rest, and the gentler emotions. When it was a 
thing of the past some men of the army guyed them, 
and some asked if it had not been a bore. To all the 
three men answered : " It was the best time we have 
had in Africa." 

** The farmer's wife failed to grasp it," said one. 
** * Going to picnic ? ' she asked. * Why, you have 
done nothing but picnic all the way up from the 
Colony. I'd have thought you had picnic enough.' " 

And afterwards, while I was in Bloemfontein, it was 
my good fortune twice to enjoy deeper and truer re- 
minders of the place the now distant sex once occupied 



"FAIR WOMEN AND BRAVE MEN" 189 

for us all. I have had tea at an English home, where 
the ladies came in gloved and with their choicest man- 
ners ; where a young hostess presided, and her little 
children shrank, wide-eyed in a corner staring at our 
stained khaki. And where we trod about with cups of 
tea and feints at gallantry in boots that made the deli- 
cate furniture tremble and the fine china shiver. And 
I have spent an evening in a drawing-room with 
several ladies, in all the dainty charm of evening dress, 
listening to their ballads, and their rich, soft speech ; 
learning all over again, like a forgotten lesson of child- 
hood, the sweeter, purer, gentler side of life. 

Do not laugh. Follow an army five months on the 
veldt, and then you Avill know what it is to see a lady. 

I should be recreant to every principle I respect if I 
did not here make especial mention, by name, of one 
lady to whom I owe a personal debt, and the whole 
British race owes a national one. I refer to Miss Maud 
Young, the matron of the Volks Hospital at Bloem- 
fontein. Keep her name in your memory, readers all, 
for though she would scorn the idea that she had done 
the least thing beyond what she was bound to do in the 
pursuit of her calling, you shall see that she deserves 
high credit. 

This hospital was a Boer Government institution, 
and she and less than half a dozen young women of 
English blood and Afrikander birth formed the staff 
under Dr. Kellner, latterly also a mayor of the capital. 



190 "FAIR WOMEN AND BRAVE MEN" 

When the war broke out the matron and nurses 
naturally resolved to leave their places and go to their 
homes rather than remain with the foes of their coun- 
try. But Dr. Kellner quieted them by saying, " I can- 
not see what difference it makes whether you have to 
nurse Boers or not. This is the first time I have ever 
heard politics introduced in connection with hospital 
work. Besides, if you stay, you will have plenty of 
British to look after." 

So they all remained at their posts, and the doctor's 
words came true, for many hundreds of officers and 
soldiers of the British army passed under their care. 
Before any British came, however, the Boers dragooned 
Miss Young and some of her helpers into their war 
service, taking them to their battlefields, at one of 
which these young women were left to sort the 
wounded from among the dead out of the ambulances 
in which all had been piled together. 

The fair young matron lived and worked in the hope • 
of caring for her own countrymen, and at last British 
wounded began to arrive. When Lord Roberts's army 
approached Bloemfontein a number of English were in 
the hospital beds. The Boers meant to take them to 
Pretoria, but Miss Young was more firmly resolved 
that they should remain, and be delivered over to the 
British with the conquered capital. Day after day 
such inquiries as " Can the British wounded be sent on 
at once?" were received at the hospital, and Miss 



"FAIR WOMEN AND BRAVE MEN" 191 

Young replied each time that her charges were in no 
condition to be moved. At last, on the day before the 
capital was seized and occupied by the British troops, 
the Boer officials came to the matron and said, " A train 
is waiting for your British sick, and we have come 
for them. There must not be another hour's delay." 
To this the lion-willed, lamb-hearted woman replied, 
" Come and see them for yourselves, and move them 
if you wish to kill them all before they reach Pretoria." 
The Boers went through the wards and lo ! every 
British patient had his head bandaged and displayed 
the feebleness of one at death's door. " Why ! " the 
Boers exclaimed, " are they all shot in the head ? " 
Miss Young replied, "You can see for yourselves." 
By this ruse— for not a man among them was either 
shot in the head or unfitted for removal— all were saved 
for the care of their comrades. 

After that the Volks Hospital filled up with British 
wounded and sick— hundreds of them— generals, colo- 
nels, majors, and men of every rank. Among them 
all moved these hearty, kindly, altogether lovable 
young women, in spotless white, with never-failing 
tenderness and never-flagging zeal. To be sent there 
was to get a mortgage on new Hfe. Miss Young once 
said to me, " We should consider it a lasting disgrace if 
an enteric patient died in our charge." After that a 
few— either two or seven, I am not certain which — did 
die in the hospital — out of all the hundreds who came 



192 '* FAIR WOMEN AND BRAVE MEN " 

— but it was because they were sent there in such ex- 
tremity of illness that no human skill or knowledge 
could save them. This was so unjust that Dr. Kellner 
felt obHged to protest, and the practice was stopped 
before the results affected the high record of the hos- 
pital — the highest of any institution of the sort, civil 
or military, of which I have heard in South Africa. 

It will not be thought extravagant if I urge that a 
medal, or some material token of recognition of her 
services, be awarded to Miss Young ; and what she has 
earned is deserved also by Dr. Kellner — a German who 
buried race feeling if he ever possessed any ; a salaried 
Boer official who put humanity high above all other 
duties and considerations. To find a faithful, reliable 
friend in Boerdom was wonderful — and in both repub- 
lics no man was found to whom the British owe so 
much as they owe to Dr. Kellner. 



CHAPTER XX 

HOW TO DEAL WITH THE ENEMY 

How to deal with the enemy in the Freed State, 
after it was conquered, was a very delicate and difficult 
problem. The British policy had been from the outset 
one of leniency and magnanimity, and the bearing of 
all men in authority, from Sir Alfred Milner and Lord 
Roberts down, had been that of a loving and trustful 
parent toward an erring child. It was not my idea of 
how war should be conducted. It is not my belief 
now that this policy could have any more pronounced 
effect than that of prolonging hostilities, even if exer- 
cised upon a highly civilised and honourable enemy. 

In the case of the Boers, whose moral sight is twisted, 
and whose moral sense departed at a time which no 
historian can fix, it seemed to me peculiarly inappro- 
priate and defective. I never once saw proof that the 
Boers set any other value upon British tolerance of 
their very dubious methods, than that upon Which they 
based the liberty and audacity to continue their mis- 
practices, with the certainty that the stern consequences 
they merited would not be meted out to them. ** The 
13 ^93 



194 HOW TO DEAL WITH THE ENEMY 

British are earning a reward in heaven," I used to think 
— and still maintain. 

An axiom with the Boers is, " If you insist that I 
shall tell the truth, then I must lie," so little do they 
value veracity. As for common honesty we have seen 
that they rank " slimness," or the ability to deceive 
and trick a neighbour, as first among human virtues. 
" Fear God, honour your parents, and cheat the Eng- 
lish," is the lesson every Boer lad is taught at his 
mother's knee. To show magnanimity and mildness 
to such a people was only to convince them that one 
was either a fool or a very cunning plotter arranging a 
trap which was to catch and torture them later on. 
In the whole course of the war they thought and called 
the British fools. Their impudent abuse of Lord 
Roberts's proclamation, calling them to lay down their 
arms, is but the most extraordinary of ten thousand 
proofs of what they thought of an honest and earnest 
effort to convince them that, when all should come 
under the British standard, their conquerors would not 
be found to be revengeful, unforgiving, or unkind. 

We did not all share the official opinion of the way 
to deal with a faintly civilised foe. I was by no means 
alone in the belief that General Sherman was right in 
the reply he made to a deputation of lady friends in 
Georgia who asked him if it could be possible that he 
meant to burn his way to the sea — even to burn the 
fair city of Atlanta. Said he : *' I mean to make war 



HOW TO DEAL WITH THE ENEMY 195 

as horrible as I can. This is your war, not ours. You 
wanted and would have it. At its best it is an awful 
thing, and the one way to shorten it, the surest way to 
save life and lessen damage, is to make it as horrible 
as we can." 

There were such generals in the army in South 
Africa ; distinguished men whom all Britain admires. 
^' The way to treat the Boers is to lay them out cold 
in rows," one used to say. And the other remarked 
at times : " This is a namby-pamby war. There is not 
enough blood about it." 

The " shuddery tales " we often heard at the front 
about how Boers treated their brother Boers if they 
made peace with Britain are not yet proven. I have 
heard some so circumstantially set forth that I have 
believed them — but all were of happenings within the 
enemy's lines, and we could not be sure. 

That is why the tales were not cabled home. Be- 
fore one might cable anything it had to be, in a way, 
the common talk of the camp, repeated by everybody, 
and denied by no one. With a just censor such as 
Lord Stanley no harm came of that rule, which pro- 
tected the public at home and the army in the field. 
There was, however, at least one censor who used to 
say, " You tell me you know this — you actually saw it. 
That may be, but I did not see it, and therefore I can- 
not allow it to go." 

The first thing of the kind we heard was that a man 



196 HOW TO DEAL WITH THE ENEMY 

had come into Bloemfontein to report to the authorities 
that five Boers had entered his brother's house, and, 
after learning that it was true that his brother had 
signed the peace agreement, had shot him dead. 
After this we heard several reports that the unrecon- 
ciled Boers were commandeering the horses, cattle, and 
forage of all who had surrendered Mausers and signed 
the peace agreement ; also that when the seceders were 
caught on their ranches they were sent to Pretoria as 
prisoners. 

Days went on, and a printer in the office of The Friend 
told me that news had come to the effect that a friend of 
his, a shopkeeper in or near Thaba 'Nchu, had been shot 
for this offence, and that the body of another seceder 
from the Boer ranks had been hung to a tree with a 
placard on his breast announcing, "This is how we 
will treat all who make peace with the British." 

Not until the fighting is thoroughly and completely 
ended shall we know precisely what the Boers have 
been doing with those who yielded up their arms at the 
first call. Those who did this certainly deserve com- 
miseration. They were tired of the war, they believed 
themselves safe in surrendering their arms, and they 
deserved a degree of protection which the British were 
not able to give them. 

Away back in the old days (that seem like years ago) 
at Modder River, I found that General Pole-Carew did 
not approve of the extreme degree of magnanimity 



HOW TO DEAL WITH THE ENEMY 197 

and leniency then being shown to the Boers. English- 
men are too straightforward to be able to comprehend 
the depths of treachery and trickery to which the 
Boers descend without conscious effort ; but General 
Pole-Carew knew the Boer character by hard study of it. 

We all felt that if he came to an important command 
they would not fool him as they were then fooling 
nearly every one else. When the British asked the 
southern Freed Staters to deliver up their arms they 
showered upon the ground before the troops the most 
grotesque collection of old Martini-Henrys, fowling- 
pieces, elephant rifles, and otherweapons handed down 
by their fathers and grandfathers. They kept their 
Mausers, and went out on commando against the Brit- 
ish as soon as their backs were turned. 

By and by the very shuddery tales to which I have 
referred began to reach us about the fate of the few 
who had honestly surrendered their genuine fighting 
arms, and were trying to keep their promise not to war 
any longer. 

It was then that I cabled home that I thought we 
would thereafter reveal a different and a sterner temper 
towards the enemy. It was also at that time that 
Pole-Carew won his promotion. It is fitting that he 
should have proved the first to treat the Boer with rigid 
justice, strict yet untinged with anger. Wherever he 
went on his first expedition south and east of Bloem- 
fontein, he demanded the arms of the " farmers " he 



198 HOW TO DEAL WITH THE ENEMY 

found on their ranches, and refused to accept any rifles 
except Mausers, accompanied by a certain amount of 
ammunition. 

When he found no man on a ranche he demanded 
proof that the owner was not away fighting in the war, 
and wherever this could not be given, he seized all the 
horses on the place. Very truly has it been said that 
this mode of dealing with the Boers of a large section 
counts against the enemy more than a great British 
victory. Had the British taken all the horses in the 
southern part of the Freed State as soon as they crossed 
it, many small battles and the deaths of hundreds of 
their men would have been prevented. 

The Guards were all immensely gratified by General 
Pole-Carew's advancement to the rank of Lieutenant- 
General, and this I know to be also true of all in the 
Ninth Brigade, which he commanded under Lord 
Methuen. 

Pole-Carew is the neatest, most scrupulously dressed 
of all the generals — the nearest to a dandy of the lot ; 
the only general who never goes out without gloves ; 
and I have an idea that Lord Roberts, with whom 
General Pole-Carew spent seven years of service, was 
just such another bean sabreur in his youth. But un- 
der, over, and behind everything else are the soldierly 
qualities of the new lieutenant-general. 

Since this war began he has ceaselessly worked at 
the problems before the army. So long as daylight 



HOW TO DEAL WITH THE ENEMY 199 

has lasted he has studied each new position it has 
taken, and the hours after daylight he has spent in 
seeking information about the enemy, the neighbour- 
ing country, and all the rest. There are few men who 
have so thoroughly posted themselves upon each battle, 
skirmish, and reconnaissance, and few who know so 
well as he the lessons to be drawn from those move- 
ments that have failed and those that have succeeded. 
I know no keener, dyed-in-the-wool soldier than he. 
I believe that since the war began nothing except the 
war and soldiering have interested him an hour. In 
stature he is another " Bobs " — a little man — but he 
carries himself so proudly that you never think of his 
stature. 



CHAPTER XXI 

BOERS AS FELLOW-TOWNSMEN 

The most interesting thing about our stay in Bloem- 
fontein was the fact that we were among the Boers. 

We entered a shop, and the tailor or chemist, or 
whatever he might be, told us that he fought us in all 
Methuen's battles. We called at a town dwelling or a 
country cottage and found that the man of the estab- 
lishment had just given up his rifle to the British and 
come back to his home and family. We entered into 
conversation with a man in the street and suddenly 
discovered that he was telling us just the things we 
did not know about some fight of which we had thought 
we knew rather too much. 

The few sore-headed and over-noisy men who were 
disposed to keep the trouble going (they were mainly 
Germans) had either run away or been sent to Cape- 
town, and we were all dwelling together as brothers in 
amity — except those who used to slip out at night and 
snipe the outposts, or betray what the British were do- 
ing to their former comrades. 

It took a little time and some severity to bring even 

300 



BOEKS AS FELLOW-TOWNSMEN 201 

this tenor of concord. A few arrests, a few fleeings, a 
few gentle hints to leave, and it was done. Some 
women, mostly Germans again, were understood to be 
tuning treason to their own voices. I knew of one 
who crept out of doors when she was obliged to go, 
but shuddered at the sight of the hated British, and 
told them so — but they were only fighting men with 
Mausers. 

All has proven just what was to have been expected, 
and yet we could not help being a little surprised. We 
never could become quite used to seeing loose-bodied, 
big-hatted Boers flopping up and down in their saddles, 
in twos and threes, in the streets — and neither shooting 
at us nor being shot at. Personally, I admit that I 
could not get used to being with them and having 
them tell me about their people and doings in the war 
— they are so " slim," so bent on saying whatever they 
think you want them to say, so generally and so deeply 
unprincipled. 

I met one of English stock, who was therefore a bit 
more believable. I only say " a bit more believable " 
because the trail of the black man is over all Africa, 
and wherever the whites live beside the blacks they 
are more or less corrupted and demoralised. This 
Uitlander said that he had been in Schumann's com- 
mando down at Rensburg. This was a most pe- 
culiar commando, he said, and was looked upon by 
all the Boers as of very little use or respectability, 



202 BOERS AS FELLOW-TOWNSMEN 

because it was all made up of English, Irish, Scotch, 
and American men who had no dislike for the Eng- 
lish, and no intention to kill any if they could help it. 
He said his comrades were all very like himself, men 
with farms and houses, wives and children, and were 
burghers years before the war. 

In order to save their property, and protect their 
families from insult, they took up arms when they 
were obliged to do so. He told me that only about 
1,700 Transvaal Boers had been fighting in the Free 
State (the British captured nearly 4,000), that there 
were not above twenty or thirty foreign mercenaries 
in the Free State forces — which is very likely to be 
true — and that there were not more than 1,000 mer- 
cenaries in the Transvaal army. He thought that, all 
told, there were about 50,000 Boers in the field at the 
outbreak of the war. He called the mercenaries 
" auxiliaries," and when I asked him why he did so 
he said it was because they were not paid, and there- 
fore could not be called mercenaries. 

Each burgher, he said, had been obliged to provide 
himself with a horse, a Mauser, thirty cartridges, and 
eight days' food, and to be ready to join a commando 
at a moment's notice. They paid very little for the 
Mauser and cartridges — presumably the price the 
Government itself paid for the weapons. The eight 
days* rations were needed for the journey to the com- 
mando, and for the men's use until the commando 



BOERS AS FELLOW-TOWNSMEN 203 

was established and providing itself with food. Rifles^ 
ammunition, and eight days' food were given to the 
foreigners, but nobody had any pay. 

" We never wanted anything in the way of proper 
food," said he. " We were always much better oft 
than you were." 

I found myself in the middle of a family circle of 
Boers on another day, and got from them a great deal 
of misinformation and the usual half per cent, of 
truth. 

The eldest daughter said that there were 400 mer- 
cenaries in the Transvaal force, and her father said 
there were 4,000. However, there were some things 
upon which they did not differ. One was that no matter 
what disagreement there had been upon the question 
whether or not the Free State ought to have gone into 
this war, it would have been impossible to keep the 
young men out of it ; their Boer blood was on fire, 
and they insisted upon fighting. My hosts did not, 
any of them, praise President Steyn — whom they ad- 
mitted to possess a weak and colourless character — 
but they insisted that he was in only a very slight degree 
responsible for the action of his State. They said that 
their President had not the power of a policeman, and 
that in this case he simply obeyed the majority. 

This Boer family also agreed that Albrecht was the 
only foreigner who was listened to or obeyed by the 
Boers, except, perhaps, the Frenchman who came out 



204 BOERS AS FELLOW-TOWNSMEN 

to teach them how to handle the Creusot guns. Al- 
brecht had been a burgher so long, and was so brave, 
that he obtained great power and influence. As an 
example of his bravery it was said that at Maaghers- 
fontein, when our artillery was frightening the Boers 
terribly, Albrecht stood up and said : " Why should 
I be afraid ? There is plenty of room for the shells to 
pass on both sides of me." He said this in a jargon- 
language, as he said everything else, for he never 
learned Taal, and sprinkled what he knew of it all over 
with German. 

I wonder whether I have ever written, in my notes 
of the Boers, how it is said that they compute their 
losses in battle ? 

Every one in England knows, of course, that eight 
was the largest number of killed which they have ever 
reported, that ** two killed " was the usual admission, 
and that their reports of each battle usually ended 
with the sentence : " The English dead covered the 
ground," or " Thousands of English and Gourkhas 
were seen dead on the field as we retired to take up a 
better position." The explanation of a part of this 
perverse mistreatment of facts was this : when a battle 
was closing the Boer commandant began to look the 
dead over. 

" Who is this ? " he asked, as he came to a body. 

" That is a Swede." 

" Bury him," he ordered. 



BOERS AS FELLOW-TOWNSMEN 205 

Stopping by a second body he asked, " Whose body 
is that ? " He was told that it was another Swede — or 
a Hollander — or a Frenchman. " Bury him," he said. 

Over a third body he was told that the remains were 
those of a Johannesburg miner. " Bury him," was his 
reply. 

When he reached the next corpse he inquired whose 
it was, and was informed that it was the body of young 
Piet Vanderbile. 

'' One killed," he remarked, making a note with his 
pencil on a piece of paper. " Tell his people in the 
commando where they can find his body to take it 
away." 

This was done ; and, as I have said, to die in battle 
among the Boers was almost like dying at home. 
Each man had fighting beside and around him his 
father, uncles, or brothers, or cousins, and these looked 
after him as decently as they could — even riding off to 
the dead man's home with his body if it was possible. 

It appears that what we used to hear about the in- 
dependence of each private soldier in a commando was 
very true. The Boers who were around us in Bloem- 
fontein all said that there was no discipline, as we un- 
derstand the term, in their ranks. A man chose his 
own place in the Boer position in battle. He fought 
or not, as he pleased. He even left his commando and 
went home when he was tired of the war, or when he 
funked under fire. Plenty of Boers returned to their 



2o6 BOERS AS FELLOW-TOWNSMEN 

homes, but it is admitted that the guying they got 
from their neighbours was scarcely more endurable than 
the fear they felt in battle. 

When the news of Piet Joubert's death reached us 
in Bloemfontein I was reminded of the account that 
Surgeon-Major Lindley, of Rimington's Corps of 
Guides, gave of the old general's visit to New York a 
dozen years ago. The two met there. The descend- 
ants of Hollanders in New York were making a great 
and festive to-do over the simple and rough old man, 
not in the least knowing that the Boers are of such 
mixed blood as to have very little claim upon kinship 
with either the Hollanders or their Knickerbocker de- 
scendants. Dr. Lindley took Joubert to see a gram- 
mar school — Tom Hunter's old school in Thirteenth 
Street, I believe. 

The doctor introduced Joubert as a famous General 
of the Washington or Simon Bolivar sort, but Joubert 
would have no praise for any skill he did not possess. 

"Heaven won my battles," said he; "and I was 
only the humble instrument." That was, of course, 
the customary Boer cant, and was not believed in for 
a moment even by the man who uttered it. But what 
he next said was sincere. 

" When I look down upon these hundreds of young 
faces," he continued, " and know that you are all here 
to get education, and when I think that the tiniest 
little child before me knows a great deal more than I 



BOERS AS FELLOW-TOWNSMEN 207 

do, I am more sad than ever to have missed a good 
schooling, and to be forced to go through life a stupid, 
ignorant old man. If I could only make you know- 
how bitterly I regret the loss of education I am sure 
that not one of you would ever throw away an hour of 
the time you have in which to study." 



CHAPTER XXII 

PLANS FOR THE GREAT ADVANCE 

In addition to the work of arranging the new govern- 
ment of the Free State, and bringing up thousands of 
horses and mules, and car-loads of provisions. Lord 
Roberts was planning and preparing to execute the 
grand raking movement by which five armies were 
simultaneously to sweep across the new state and meet 
at Pretoria in the Transvaal. These armies were being 
strengthened, perfected, and moved to their bases, 
while small forces ranged hither and thither to circulate 
the Field-Marshal's call to the burghers to lay down 
their arms, and to sign an agreement to keep the peace. 

Judging the Boer standard of honour by his own, 

and estimating their good sense at an equally high 

valuation, he reposed more confidence in what followed 

than he ever felt inclined to vouchsafe to the Boer 

afterwards. This was because the greater number of 

the weapons they at first delivered up were useless, 

old-fashioned guns — heirlooms and curios — and their 

promises not to fight any longer were violated as 

promptly as was possible. 
208 



PLANS FOR THE GREAT ADVANCE 209 

General Clements's army was one of those that were 
drawn to the capital in readiness for the sweeping of 
the country with Lord Roberts's many brooms. I am 
convinced that Clements's march from Norvals Pont 
to Bloemfontein deserves more recognition than has 
been given to it. It is true there was no opposition, 
but this was due to the general's masterly handling of 
the column. The advance on Philippolis was made 
without incident, but after this town had been left be- 
hind small commandoes were reported all over the 
country. These, expecting Clements's force to keep 
on the main road, hovered round its left flank, and its 
flying columns, picked men on picked horses, advanc- 
ing with great rapidity, took them by complete surprise. 
They had no time to consider what they should do 
before the British were upon them, with the result 
that about 2,000 altogether laid down their arms and 
returned to their different occupations — or pretended 
to do so. 

With the object of making a demonstration, the 
force was divided into three columns, covering an enor- 
mous tract of country, striking dismay into the hearts 
of the most disaffected, and impressing many with the 
uselessness of continuing the struggle. 

Boer-like, the farmers met the troops with the ut- 
most cordiality, and entertained them with great hos- 
pitality. On every farm the men had returned, and 

were busy ploughing. All expressed their relief at 
14 



2IO PLANS FOR THE GREAT ADVANCE 

getting rid of their arms, and showed no reluctance to 
do so. 

This was on our way to Koffyfontein where Clem- 
ents's force passed through a grand cattle country, 
finding the grass luxuriant, the cattle fat, the farm- 
houses comfortable, and the farmers prosperous. But 
afterwards the scene changed, and from Emmaus, 
through Petrusburg, and to within thirty miles of 
Bloemfontein, the country was poverty-stricken, with 
no dams for the storing of water, the little patches of 
garden being watered from wells. The farmers — ig- 
norant, uncouth men of the lower class — told pitiful 
tales of the damage done by rinderpest, drought, 
locusts, and the war. The women were meanly clad 
and looked half-starved. Dirty children ran about 
barefooted. 

The reception given to the troops was the reverse of 
hearty, provisions were unobtainable, and the men 
viewed the coming of the soldiers with a listless apathy 
which bordered on sullenness. They gave up their 
arms, however, and were anxious to get passes en- 
abling them to go to market with loads of dung. They 
seemed to take everything as a matter of course, and 
would express no opinion on the merits of their cause. 

It was considered that this march proved that the 
British cavalry and mounted infantry were as mobile 
as the enemy's. Their loss in horses was very slight, 
and the survivors were fresh and fit after covering quite 



PLANS FOR THE GREAT ADVANCE 211 

forty miles a day. The infantry accomplished long 
marches without fatigue, doing one day as much as 
twenty miles. 

But not everything that was occurring in and around 
Bloemfontein afforded the British so much satisfaction. 
They were surrounded and infested by spies and ene- 
mies, and were obliged to weed them out of Bloemfon- 
tein, by warning some to go, and carrying many away 
as prisoners. To the eastward and northward armed 
bands waged petty warfare, that was marked in the 
beginning by the shocking little " affair of the Glen," 
and at the end by the startling engagement in the 
Kornespruit — known in England as the Sanna's Post 
surprise. 

It was on March 23rd that Lieutenant-Colonel Crabbe, 
Captain Trotter, and Lieutenant the Honourable 
Edward Lygon, all of the Grenadiers, with Lieutenant- 
Colonel Codrington, of the Coldstreams, and a trooper 
of the Grahamstown Light Horse, rode a few miles 
beyond their camp, on the Modder above the capital, 
and were shot down by some men of the Johannesburg 
Mounted Police. These men were reckoned as being 
some of the best shots in the Boer army. The British 
officers, armed only with gigantic pluck and Webley 
revolvers, nevertheless endeavoured to head them off — 
with pitiful fortune. Colonel Crabbe received a slight 
wound. Colonel Codrington, a severe one, and Lieuten- 
ant Lygon (one of the most admired and beloved men 



212 PLANS FOR THE GREAT ADVANCE 

in the army) was killed. All three had been previously- 
wounded in Lord Methuen's engagements. Captain 
Trotter was also badly wounded. 

Just a week later there was a notable little fight at 
Karee Siding, between Glen and Brandfort, with some 
of the Boers who blew up Glen Bridge and shot down 
our officers in the encounter at the Glen. 

General Tucker's division in the centre with two en- 
circling arms, one of cavalry under French and one of 
mounted infantry under Le Gallais, attacked the Boers 
on several kopjes, drove them from every position, and 
left them fleeing towards Brandfort. The British loss 
was about a hundred. By this blow they secured all 
the hills commanding Brandfort. This engagement 
again demonstrated the fact that modern arms create 
vast battlefields. The field of the Karee Siding affair 
had a front of ten to fifteen miles, making it excess- 
ively difficult to witness the fight intelligently or com- 
prehend the movements of the forces. 

The Sauna's Post (or Kornespruit) surprise deserves 
a chapter by itself. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

STRIDING TO PRETORIA 

After Sanna's Post at least seven thousand Boers, 
under the guerilla leaders Olivier and De Wet, moved 
toward the base of the Orange River Colony — as Lord 
Roberts had named the former Free State — and inter- 
est centred upon Dewetsdorp, south-east of Bloemfon- 
tein. At this place General Gatacre maintained a post 
of five companies — three of Royal Irish Rifles, and two 
of Mounted Infantry. Hearing of the retirement of 
the Ninth Division to Bloemfontein, Gatacre, who had 
never been supplied with nearly enough men to guard 
the great reach of Colonial frontier for which he was 
responsible, ordered the Dewetsdorp force to withdraw. 
It was enveloped by the enemy at Reddersburg, where, 
after a futile fight, it surrendered just when strong help 
was close at hand. This was General Gatacre's last 
activity before he was recalled. 

General Rundle, and his command which had been 
at Kimberley, was ordered to Springfontein. Hunter's 
Tenth Division came out of Natal, and while the 
lower end of the new colony was filling with com- 

213 



214 STRIDING TO PRETORIA 

batant Boers, Dalgety was surrounded at Wepener, and 
Chermside (succeeding to Gatacre's place) and Brabazon 
were moving forward with the knowledge that the main 
British force at Bloemfontein was ready to do its part. 
The purpose of the British was for their southern com- 
mands to drive the Boers north, and for detachments 
of the main army to bag them on the way. The relief 
of Wepener would follow either automatically or by 
direct attack on its beleaguers. The Boers had seized 
the waterworks near Bloemfontein and the capital was 
obliged to subsist upon the water of the wells, most of 
which was productive of enteric, a malady always epi- 
demic there in the summer-time, but much less general 
and severe since the river water had been brought to 
the city. Ian Hamilton was detailed to move on the 
waterworks, and General French, with General Pole- 
Carew, was to advance on Leeukop. 

Sir Leslie Rundle, combining with Brabant and 
Hart, was to give the Boers battle at Dewetsdorp. 
The battle scene was set at that place on April 20th, 
but delays, which proved as fatal to the British schemes 
as they were unnecessary, kept off the contact of the 
opposing forces until the 23rd ; for instance, one gen- 
eral wished to rest his infantry, and a despatch from 
Rundle to the Field-Marshal was misunderstood (prob- 
ably incorrectly sent), and caused Lord Roberts to 
order Rundle to wait for Pole-Carew. The crafty 
Boers, with no more stomach for a fight arranged by 



STRIDING TO PRETORIA 215 

the British than they had ever shown, fired their guns 
during all of the 23rd without doing much harm, while 
Rundle held his ground in front of them, and French 
and Pole-Carew were drawing a net all around them. 
Then— on the night of the 23rd— the Boers slipped 
away, having sent off their waggons on the previous 
night. On their retreat they wasted a little time upon 
the obdurate force at Wepener, and then retired to 
Thaba N'chu, taking with them about 1,000 prisoners 
and seven guns as their prizes. The immediate relief 
of Wepener and the capture by General Ian Hamilton 
and Smith-Dorrien of the Bloemfontein waterworks are 
the only bright spots in this. dark chapter. 

Colonel Dalgety, commanding the advance guard of 
Brabant's division, had been in pursuit of some Boers 
who were coming up from the Cape Cplony border 
along the edge of Basutoland. It was on April 9th 
that he was attacked by a far greater force than his 
own at Jammersburg Drift near Wepener. He pre- 
pared for a long resistance. On April 25th the attacks 
of Brabant on the besiegers proved successful and the 
Boers, not only beaten but afraid of capture by General 
French, fled northward. 

On the 25th of April, Ridley's mounted brigade, 
largely made up of Australasians, and Smith-Dorrien's 
brigade of infantry went to Thaba N'chu to clear 
the way, and did so by gallant work with a loss of only 
twenty killed and wounded. General Hamilton fol- 



2i6 STRIDING TO PRETORIA 

lowed, and the British flag was hoisted for the second 
time over that nest of treacherous villages. General 
French took command and made some unsuccessful 
efforts to drive about 6,000 Boers from the near 
vicinity. Then, on April 28th, Ian Hamilton moved 
to Winburg to co-operate with Lord Roberts's north- 
ward march. 

The brilliant General Hamilton entered Winburg on 
May 5th, after fighting every day for five days on the 
way. His then became the army of the right flank on 
the forward march to Pretoria. It was made up of 
Ridley's First Mounted Infantry Brigade, Smith- 
Dorrien's Nineteenth Brigade, the Twenty-first Brigade 
under Bruce-Hamilton, Broadwood's Cavalry Brigade, 
and some batteries of Field and Horse Artillery — five 
in all — and two five-inch guns. General Sir H. E. 
Colvile followed in the rear of Hamilton ; Lord 
Roberts's main army moved straight forward, leaving 
the Sixth Division in Bloemfontein in reserve, Hart's 
Brigade had gone around to Kimberley to become part 
of Sir Archibald Hunter's Tenth Division, and this and 
Methuen's Division formed the army of the left flank. 
On that side of the country in advance of Lord 
Roberts's twenty-five-mile front, was Mahon pushing 
forward to Mafeking. Roberts had sent word to 
Baden-Powell to sit tight, and to General Buller to be 
prepared to break out of Natal and co-operate with the 
rest. 



STRIDING TO PRETORIA 217 

Hamilton fought the battle of Houtneck before he 
entered Winburg, and when he came into that town 
the main army was passing through Brandfort. With 
what now seems like a leap from the old capital the 
army entered the new seat, Kroonstadt, whither Steyn 
had taken his portable government. Heilbron was 
next taken by the army of the right flank, and there 
Christian De Wet parted with fifteen waggons of his 
convoy. 

On May 24th the fore-fighters joined Roberts. All 
were nearing the Vaal except French, who was already 
there. Broadwood crossed and kept a way open on 
the night of May 25th, the Engineers having cut an 
inclined road into each bank for the guns and waggons. 
The place where the main army went over was a drift 
near Vereeniging. Hamilton and French went ahead, 
over Lindeque's Drift, French impatiently pushing far 
to the fore, until, on the 25th, he was opposed by 
Boer artillery in position on the Rand near Johannes- 
burg. 

Halted here. Lord Roberts's main force waited for 
the promulgation of his plan of attack. He had it 
ready on the instant, and French and Hamilton were 
executing their part of it the very next day, but we 
will take this opportunity to cast an eye all over the 
field and see what the outlying forces were about. 
General Hunter had chosen Colonel Mahon to go to 
the relief of Mafeking with 100 mounted men of Barton's 



2i8 STRIDING TO PRETORIA 

Brigade, 460 men of the Kimberley Mounted Corps, 
440 of the Imperial Light Horse men, four Horse 
Artillery guns and two pom-poms. This force started 
on May 5th and engaged the Boers on May 13th at 
Kraipan Siding. Beating his way past the Boers Mahon 
forged ahead, and on May 15th, when twenty miles 
west of Mafeking, met Colonel Plumer's little band 
which had come down from the north for this purpose. 
Snyman, the Boer leader, knew of this, made a final 
effort to capture the town and, on May 13th, was beaten 
back by Baden-Powell, the ingenious, resourceful, and 
heroic commander of Mafeking. On May i6th Plumer 
and Mahon defeated the Boers in another engagement, 
and on May 17th relieved and entered the town. 

Baden-Powell had held the town against the enemy 
from October 12th to May 17th — six months and six 
days. Mahon had gone to him, 223 miles in ten days, 
and had fought two battles on the way. Hunter ad- 
vanced from Fourteen Streams to Christiania and 
Methuen marched from Boshof to Hoopstadt, both on 
Roberts's left, to flank the Boers if they checked Lord 
Roberts, or to capture them, or at least to protect 
Lord Roberts's line of communication, should the 
Boers retreat. In the meantime General Sir Redvers 
Buller had begun to move away from Ladysmith to 
the Free State. On June 22nd he had passed Laing's 
Neck and reached Standerton. 

The Field-Marshal, now near Johannesburg, planned 



STRIDING TO PRETORIA 219 

to turn the enemy's position, and his two great finger- 
like antennae, French and Hamilton, pressed on by- 
Florida, to flank, and, if possible, turn the Boers while 
the main army advanced straight forward. It seized 
the railway junction at Germiston, east of Johannes- 
burg, on the front, and partly at the side, of the Boer 
position. With the investment of Germiston Lord 
Roberts took several engines and much rolling-stock, 
which were of great value to him. His vanguard 
fought the battle of Johannesburg, in which many 
regiments — and notably the Gordons — suffered fear- 
fully, but added to their record another fierce and 
awful battle ending in victory. There was no farther 
defence of the mining capital. A very short rest for 
the army followed, and then the Transvaal capital, 
Pretoria, fell on the 5th of June ; at least, it was upon 
that day that the army began to march into the town, 
though the Boers had marched out on the night of the 
4th. 

The first British flag raised in Pretoria was hoisted 
over the prison where the officers among the British 
prisoners were confined. This flag had been made 
out of a Transvaal " four-colour " flag by a prisoner, 
and when the first of the British, the Duke of West- 
minster and Winston Churchill, rode up to the jail on 
the morning of June 5th and demanded the surrender 
of the place, the gates were thrown open, the guards 
flung down their rifles, the prisoners cheered, and 



220 STRIDING TO PRETORIA 

the Transvaal flag came down from its pole to give 
place to the Union Jack. 

It was at two o'clock in the afternoon that Lord 
Roberts and his staff and the foreign military attaches 
enterd Pretoria. They advanced to the Central Square, 
where are the Parliament House, the Town Hall, and 
the offices of the Government officials. The Union 
Jack was run up over the Parliament House, while 
some cheered and most of the onlookers remained 
silent. Then came the " march past " of practically 
the whole army, Pole-Carew leading at the head of the 
thin, tough, browned, and dirty Giiards ; Ian Hamilton 
and his battered and ragged men following. For two 
hours — and some say for three — the great centipede 
of khaki and steel wound its way through the city and 
past the Commander-in-Chief. So, with stately dignity 
and perfect order and discipline, the forces of the new 
Government came in while Kruger and his satellites 
fled to the Portuguese border with as much of the 
people's gold as they could *' lift " and as many of the 
State papers as they could takeaway to hide the proofs 
of the devilry, corruption, and fraud that had distin- 
guished and finally ruined their rule. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

LORD ROBERTS, MASTER OF MEN 

We who were in and with the army could feel an 
instant and bone-deep change in the men around us 
when it became known that Field-Marshal Lord 
Roberts was coming out to take command of the 
forces. 

The sentence " Bobs is coming " was like an abraca- 
dabra, opening the way ahead, levelling the kopjes, 
vanquishing the Boers, ending the tiresome disppoint- 
ing struggle — all in anticipation, of course, and yet in 
an anticipation steel-girdered with confidence. 

It was not only the men in the ranks who showed 
and exulted in this reinvigoration ; their officers were 
just as certain that it was the master who was coming. 

From that day it became my task to study this 
unique man, who is, I believe, more beloved and ad- 
mired, trusted more implicitly, followed more un- 
questioningly, and obeyed more cheerfully (especially 
when he sets his army its hardest tasks) than any living 
man of whom we have knowledge. 

The first time the correspondents saw him was at a 

221 



222 LORD ROBERTS, MASTER OF MEN ^ 

railway-car window at Modder River. He sent for 
them and addressed them as one who speaks to friends. 
It seemed to them that he lifted every disability, and 
brushed away every limitation which had hampered 
and almost crippled them in their work up to that time. 
They were to write what they pleased, he said, and this 
was not to be censored. Only their telegrams would 
be scrutinised. They were to go wherever he went, 
wherever they willed to go. 

Many had never seen him before, but all surrendered 
to the spell that surcharges the atmosphere around 
him, for during this brief interview he revealed that 
sympathy, trust, and frankness, and that breadth of 
view which are among his most marked traits. They 
looked on his face as upon the face of a Man-Leader ; 
a man born to ride in the van of men, to be followed 
and obeyed. 

To me his face suggests the front of a granite moun- 
tain, seamed, lined, battered by storm, strain, and rack- 
ing change. It records acquaintance with every trial 
to which mortals are put, all suffered in the solitude of 
undivided responsibility. Care, worry, affliction, sick- 
ness, danger, unceasing reflection, all had left their 
marks there, yet all are written across a gentle, sym- 
pathetic countenance, never gay or merry, yet seldom 
stern, and wholly ignorant of passion. 

I have known many great faces, but that of Lord 
Roberts is a face apart. I fancy that, in the minds of 



LORD ROBERTS, MASTER OF MEN 223 

their worshippers, some of the soberer gods of the old 
mythologies had faces like his. 

He was as frank and liberal in his welcome to the 
foreign attaches as he had been to the war correspond- 
ents. The attaches had waited in Capetown until 
he sent for them. They came, thinking that they 
were going to be shunted aside and left out of the 
excitement, as they had been with a lesser army and 
a lesser general elsewhere on the other side of the 
continent. 

. But when they met Lord Roberts he said, in effect, 
" You are to do as you choose and go where you 
like — only please do not get in the way of any bullets, 
as I am responsible for your safety." 

One night at the private dinner tendered to him, as 
described elsewhere in these pages, when the roses hung 
over every man's head in token of the liberty with which 
all were entitled to speak, without fear of more than an 
echo reaching the outer world, one of his friends said 
to me, " Lord Roberts never objects to the publication 
of anything he says before a gathering of men, because 
it is his rule never to say what he would regret to have 
repeated." 

In person he is " Little Bobs." 

He is one of those small packages in which the gods 
have so often packed military genius, as if it were a 
rare commodity, not obtainable in bulk. He dresses in 
serge khaki, which, plain as that always must be, he 



224 LORD ROBERTS, MASTER OF MEN 

renders the more plain by ridding it of all orders and 
decorations. 

There are men on his staff — there was even an 
American newspaper reporter with one of the armies 
— who wore a line and a half of ribbons. But the 
chief, who is entitled to perhaps four lines, appears 
every day, for every duty and function, with a tunic as 
bare of decorations as that of any civilian. He is so 
neat and precise in his dress that I suspect he must 
have been a dandy in earlier life. He is quick and 
nervous in his movements, and his constant habit is to 
thrust either one or both hands under his belt — a 
practice which makes it easy for artists to familiarise 
the public with his figure. He is instantaneous and 
direct in conversation, and goes as straight to the point 
in view as a well-aimed bullet to a target. I have 
noticed that when he meets new people he advances 
toward them eagerly, listens intently, and in three min- 
utes either engages the new acquaintance in earnest 
conversation or has done with him with a decisive nod 
of parting. 

With the army in South Africa his headquarters 
form a court — almost as if he were a part of the 
Royalty he represents. You do not call upon him. 
You sign your name in a book, and he sends for you 
later if he wants to see you. It may be a duke whom 
you find in the central salle of the Residency — as it was 
in my case — and who offers the register for you to sign. 



LORD ROBERTS, MASTER OF MEN 225 

The Field-Marshal works continuously, and to do so 
has to be free from interruption ; therefore visitors 
meet him only at lunch or dinner. In Bloemfontein, 
where he was living between walls, his table was a small 
one standing a few feet from the head of the very large, 
long table at which sat his staff — his ponderous, im- 
pressive staff of distinguished men of the aristocracy. 
You dined with " Bobs," in khaki of course, at his 
small table — if you were highly honoured ; or you 
might dine with his staff and be presented to him after 
the meal for as long or brief an interview as he pleased. 

That is precisely the amount and extent of state 
about his surroundings. But all state vanishes when 
you touch the hand of " the Little Man," and talk 
with him about the two subjects which engross him — 
the war around him and politics at home. 

If you wonder that politics find such spacious lodg- 
ment as they do in his mind, you have not remem- 
bered how politics have affected him in his career as 
a general, here in South Africa, when he could have 
prevented this war by a vastly smaller one ; in Kanda- 
har ; in many fields. 

Lord Roberts never smokes tobacco, and with drink 
he has little to do. A glass of wine with two of the 
three meals sufBces for him. He preaches temperance 
to his soldiers, and they all know that he shows no 
patience with those who drink to excess, and extols 
sobriety, but, like all broadminded men, he refrains 
15 



226 LORD ROBERTS, MASTER OF MEN 

from advocating the impossible — one form of which is 
total abstinence. 

He has never been known to use an oath, and, in- 
deed, there must be comparatively few men whose 
religion influences them so deeply as does his in every 
affair of life. He never parades his piety, never forces 
it upon those around him. Yet on every Sunday 
since he joined his army he has attended Divine serv- 
ice. Not a word has he ever spoken to his staff 
suggesting or ordering their presence — yet he is certain 
to attend the weekly service — an example to the army 
so modestly and so persistently presented that it cannot 
but be powerful. When he took the sacrament at 
Driefontein, the other day, in the face, one might say, 
of the whole army, it was without a hint of the parad- 
ing of religion. All saw in it an act of simple faith. 

It is hard to reconcile his gentleness and sympathy 
with the firm — sometimes stern — course which a gen- 
eral so supreme in command, and at the head of so 
large an army, must often have to follow. I have 
asked many of his friends how he can unite these 
qualities, how he can possess traits which we imagine 
must war with one another. 

** He does possess them, that's all," is the best 
answer I have had ; " I don't know how, but he does.** 

'' He is all things to all men, in the best sense of 
the phrase," said one who knows him well. ^* He has 
the royal gift of remembering everybody, the human 



LORD ROBERTS, MASTER OF MEN 227 

quality of flawless tact, the superior, almost super- 
human, sense of justice. Good men like him because 
he is good ; kindly men find a responsive chord in his 
nature ; and those who are stern feel that he, too, is 
stern upon occasion." He has complimented a Tommy 
on his soldierliness in such a way as to win the man's 
loyalty to the end and surrender of his life, and on the 
very same day he has ordered home a general, know- 
ing that the order carried with it the ever-enduring 
disgrace of a man who meant as well as himself, but 
had not the capacity to realise his ambition. 

His army will do anything for him ; inarch longer, 
starve harder, go without tents, blankets, and rum 
more days and weeks, and die in greater numbers 
for him than for any other man alive. And they will 
do all these things willingly and gladly where other 
armies might protest and grumble, and go ahead with 
suUenness. He can get more out of an army, from 
the Guards down to the roughest scouting force (as he 
did between Modder River and Bloemfontein), than 
any Russian or German general could have extorted 
with an iron discipline and adamantine authority. It 
was the so-called " London pets " — the Guards — who 
broke all European records in a three days' march into 
the Free State. Instead of grumbling they made it a 
matter for boasting. Whenever other privates would 
damn another leader, Roberts's men say simply, " Bobs 
knows what 'e's about " ; " Bobs will do the job." It 



228 LORD ROBERTS, MASTER OF MEN 

suffices the majority merely to sum him up with this 
phrase, " 'E is a man ! " He can make no mistake that 
his army will recognise. Whatever he orders or does 
is regarded as the reflection of superhuman inspiration. 

Even if he fails he is certain to be considered infal- 
lible at the end. There may have been more than one 
Wellington at the head of Britain's armies in the past, 
but there has never been a previous Roberts — never in 
English history has there been such idolatry, or any 
such magnetic leader. 

" The men feel that they know him and that he 
knows them," I was told. " It is a case of love 
returned for love, and admiration exchanged for admi- 
ration." He scrupulously returns the salute of every 
Tommy he meets. He speaks to hundreds about 
whatever he sees them doing, or whatever interests 
him or rouses his curiosity. He thanks whoever 
does anything for him, and compliments all who are 
smart or soldier-like in manner and brave in service. 
He knows the names of a multitude of men. 

" Sometimes," said a general, " when I have been 
with him inspecting regiments in a new command, he 
has said : ' Now, in this regiment are those fellows who 
did so-and-so at Kabul,* or Tirah, or anywhere. And 
he asks for them by name and talks to them." He is 
sharp on offenders, and can detect looting, defects in 
dress, misbehaviour of any sort with so quick and keen 
an eye that the men feel — in this as in his courtesy — 



LORD ROBERTS, MASTER OF MEN 229 

that he is one of them. They know that he is to be 
reckoned with in every way. 

We have all been slightly misled by the Boer word 
" commandeering." It makes stealing seem less offen- 
sive—in fact, under the new name of " commandeering" 
stealing commends itself to many of us. Lord Roberts 
has been awfully down on it. He seems not to have 
caught the spirit in which we who would not " steal " 
a pin have been commandeering Dutch Bibles, horses, 
and any other portables in our path. At a certain 
point on the veldt one of Roberts's staff was riding 
ahead of the Field-Marshal, and saw a Canadian with 
two fat fowls hanging from his saddle. 

" Here," said the ofificer, " where did you get those 
fowls?" 

'* Commandeered *em, s'r." 

" Well, for goodness' sake, hide them. Here's Lord 
Roberts just behind us. He'll have you shot." 

Up cantered Lord Roberts with his face troubled. 
" What is that man doing with those chickei^ ? " 
he asked sternly. 

" Sir," replied the staff officer, " he has understood that 
you are on very short rations, and he desires to offer the 
fowls for your dinner. He got them off a farmer close 
by." 

" Why, how very kind," said the Field-Marshal, 
pleased to the heart, and smiling warmly. " What is 
your name? I am very much obliged to you." 



230 LORD ROBERTS, MASTER OF MEN 

"Now, no more of that, do you hear?" the officer 
whispered to the Canadian, who rode away, leaving his 
plunder, and doubtless very glad to part with it as he did. 

The officers are as anxious to please the Field-Mar- 
shal as the men, and one class thinks no less of his 
genius and his marvellous personality than the other. 
Those who are near to him say that when he is talking 
to an officer about his work, he makes you feel that you 
have his entire confidence, and that he believes you 
will do the business better than any one else could 
do it. But if you do it wrong he will tell you so as 
frankly, and will point out the why and wherefore of 
his displeasure. And I don't envy the feelings of a 
man who knows he has displeased the chief. In using 
men he is as broad as the sky. His estimate of a 
man's fitness or value for whatever purpose he needs 
him is never in the least affected by any knowledge he 
may have of irregularities in the man's private life. 
" I did not ask if the man drinks or gambles," he will 
say, ** I wanted to know whether he could circumvent 
the Boers, and cut the railway to prevent their escape." 

Above all else, " Bobs " is a man of action. His life 
is all activity, and his mind works with his body — that 
is, in the heat of affairs and of movement his brain is 
coolest and works most quickly. His compact, nervey 
little body is all a reservoir of strength, and you can 
speak of his physique as you speak of the physique of 
a ^iant. Indeed, he lives on his nerve and draws upon 



LORD ROBERTS, MASTER OF MEN 231 

his strength, as if both were inexhaustible. He will sit 
and write for ten days on end, dealing with a multitude 
of varied subjects — civil, military, covering the enor- 
mous range of view of a soldier and an administrator ; 
and then, if the need comes, he will bounce on a horse 
and ride fifty or sixty miles, tiring lieutenants whose 
lives are spent in the saddle. 

He lives very plainly, asking for few comforts and 
no luxuries. When he visited Modder River he found 
Lord Methuen established in the hotel, and that gen- 
eral had been at the pains to clear out a part of the 
building and appoint it for the Field-Marshal's lodg- 
ings. But Lord Roberts, thanking him, remarked that 
he had ordered his tent to be set on the veldt, and that 
there he meant to stay. When his army is in motion, 
marching and fighting, he travels with a covered 
waggon and a tent, the first being his house and the 
second his workroom. The waggon is a light four- 
wheeled contrivance whose top is a roomy and com- 
plete enclosure and defence against rain and cold wind. 
On the side-board is painted " F.M. Lord Roberts," so 
that we may all know it when it comes along. 

Such is the famous " Bobs " — like so many other 
men at so many points, so ordinary in a hundred little 
human ways, yet so separated from us all in other 
respects — in other respects which seem to us super- 
human, that are antagonistic to much of what we know 
of him, that are inscrutable, that seem illogical when 
we try to account for him, and sum him up. 



CHAPTER XXV 

A GROUP OF GENERALS 

I NOTICED, after my return to London, that I was 
more often asked about Lord Kitchener than about any- 
other general except the great Field-Marshal, who, 
here as with the army, nearly blocks the whole horizon 
— as he should. 

There was then little need to discuss Lord Kitchener 
either as an independent or as a lieutenant of Lord 
Roberts. In neither capacity has he counted for much 
in the war, or increased his prestige as either a fighter 
or a strategist. He made a meteoric appearance dur- 
ing our pursuit and subsequent surrounding of Cronje's 
army, but it was not the common opinion that he 
pleased the Field-Marshal by his military methods. 
They reached their climax at Paardeberg, and appeared 
too much like an exaggeration of the worst of Lord 
Methuen's mistakes. 

The fact that Lord Kitchener was summarily sent 
away as soon as Lord Roberts came up with the be- 
sieging force, and that the ex-Sirdar's orders were to 

put down a petty rebellion of 400 farmers at Prieska 
232 



A GROUP OF GENERALS 233 

carried with it a suggestion which had but one interpre- 
tation where I heard it discussed. 

This experience is quite apart from another fact 
about Lord Kitchener, which was almost sensationally 
noticeable from the day he landed in South Africa. 
This was the fact of his unpopularity with the ofificers 
throughout the army — to which, of course, Lord 
Roberts was never a party. 

A member of Parliament whom I met in Kimberley 
went so far as to characterise this feeling as evidence 
of a " conspiracy " against the hero of Omdurman, but 
I afterwards came to see that there was no combina- 
tion or organised activity against Lord Kitchener. He 
was simply regarded as a man reputed to be needlessly 
stern, severe, and exacting when in command. 

His first conspicuous act when in South Africa was 
the withdrawal of the transport service from separated 
commands, in order that it should be managed by the 
Army Service Corps. Thus it came about that every 
brigadier and colonel saw a certain amount of his 
power shifted to what he considered a subordinate 
branch of the service. Considerable latitude in the • 
enjoyment of comforts and extras which had been made 
possible when these officers controlled the waggons 
was also curtailed. The army wailed and gnashed its 
teeth, but I confess I always thought that reason and 
right were on Lord Kitchener's side in this matter. 
Lord Kitchener's plan was the only one by which an 



234 A GROUP OF GENERALS 

insufficient number of waggons and teams could be 
utilised for all that they were worth. 

And I suspect it is as true to-day as it was last year 
that even if General Lord Kitchener has not shone as 
a fighting-man in South Africa, he remains the great- 
est military organiser of his generation. What he did 
in leading up to and winning the battle of Omdurman 
was the sort of work in which he stands alone. And 
why might he not have paralleled this feat in South 
Africa if he had been sent there at the beginning — or 
a few months earlier? 

But though General Kitchener is not next to Lord 
Roberts in success in this war, there is a general who 
must soon receive at home the credit and the plaudits 
which he has gained from the army in the field. 

His name is French — Major-General J. D. P. French 
— and, if I mistake not, it is for ever to be coupled 
with Lord Roberts's in connection with this war in the 
hearts and minds of his countrymen. Chance is always 
a great factor in the success of a soldier, and chance 
has been so good to General French as to send him to 
the east, the middle, the west, and the north, nearly 
always in time to do (or to help in) some master stroke. 
It can almost be said that he figured in every great 
success of the British arms from Elandslaagte to Bloem- 
fontein — and since. 

He had but just landed in Natal from England, and 
been at the front about forty-eight hours, when he 



A GROUP OF GENERALS 235 

was put in charge of the Natal cavalry, and sent to fight 
the terrible yet splendid engagement at Elandslaagte. 
From Natal he went to the northern frontier of Cape 
Colony, and held the Boers in check there for many 
weeks, never succeeding in vanquishing them, but pre- 
venting their farther descent into the colony, and the 
consequent rising of the disloyal Dutch subjects of the 
Queen in that large district. 

I was not with the armies either in Natal or around 
Rensburg, but where I was one continually heard of the 
extraordinary work General French was accomplishing 
on the Free State border. He maintained a position 
thirty to thirty-five miles in length, and the Boers told 
us that in all this war (this was before Lord Roberts 
had taken command) no British general had so aston- 
ished and wearied them. Commandoes were sent from 
Natal and taken from Maaghersfontein to create the 
extended wall that was needed to face this restless, 
persistent general, who hammered away in one county, 
as it were, in the morning, and in another on the same 
afternoon. 

Just before Lord Roberts took command a story 
that ran through the multitude of officers' mess tents 
in the field was to the effect that General French had 
informed the authorities that he could force his way 
through the enemy's lines and into the Free State if 
he could bombard Colesberg. He was desirous of 
doing so, it was said, but the permission was refused. 



236 A GROUP OF GENERALS 

I cannot say how true this is, but it was not contra- 
dicted by any one. 

Little by little and most quietly the cavalry were 
withdrawn from that frontier after Lord Roberts's 
arrival, to be massed again under this tireless general 
in the neighbourhood of Graspan, whence he made a 
magnificent march that was truly said to be the admi- 
ration of the whole army. From Ramdam to Jacobs- 
dal and on to Paardeberg he chased and herded the 
Boers, as he did afterwards from Bloemfontein to Pre- 
toria. Leaving Cronje in full flight. General French, 
without pausing, flew over to Kimberley and literally 
purged its neighbourhood of Boers. Here he added 
the relief of the diamond city to his triumphs. This 
was done under Lord Roberts's planning and orders, 
yet very great credit remains to French for the manner 
in which he disposed of the obstacles that he had to 
overcome. 

Without waiting for applause or rest at Kimberley, 
he pushed back to Lord Roberts's main army, and 
reached it in time to win a great share of the credit for 
that greatest coup of the war. He repulsed the Boer 
reinforcements, and by utilising a certain position in 
the field he made it evident to Cronje and his disheart- 
ened men that a longer stay in the river-bed was out 
of the question. 

During this very extraordinary sweep that he made 
from Graspan around to Kimberley he did constant 



A GROUP OF GENERALS 237 

damage, capturing transport waggons, destroying 
laagers, and repulsing various bodies of Boers. Violent 
rains, fearful thunderstorms, choking dust that pursued 
him for days, were the lesser hindrances in his way. 

The greater ones were the result upon his horses of 
the fearful strain to which they were put, the scarcity 
of fodder, the difficulty in getting water, and the 
limited quantity of food at his disposal for his men. 

As to his personality, the phrase " the square little 
general " would serve to describe him in army circles 
without a mention of his name. He has the shape of 
a brick as well as the best characteristics of one. He 
is a short, thick chunk of a man, who always stands 
with his feet and legs well apart, and sits hunched up 
on his saddle like a Red Indian squaw. A view of his 
back suggests the thick-set, neckless shape of General 
Grant, and I suspect there is a great deal of Grant's 
doggedness in him. Like Grant, too, he shows no con- 
cern for externals. 

He is quiet, undemonstrative, easy, and gentle. 
When you are with his command you don't notice him, 
you don't think about him — unless you are a soldier, 
and then you are glad you are there. He is perfectly 
accessible to any one, but speaks very little when ad- 
dressed. He must be a fine judge of men, for he has 
a splendid staff around him — splendid in the sense that 
they are all soldierly like himself, and all active and 
useful. Judging from the way his men live in the 



238 A GROUP OF GENERALS 

country when they are swarming over it, he must be 
easy, as true soldiers are in those situations, though 
the discipline of the rank and file is excellent. You do 
not notice his dress, but if you should it would be seen 
to be more serviceable than smart. 

When he went over to Thaba N'chu from Bloem- 
fontein on a bill-sticking expedition (as the distribution 
of Lord Roberts's proclamation was called) he showed 
by his treatment of the Boers that he had a very kindly 
nature. He stopped at night in the Boer houses, and 
got on very well with the families, with all of whose 
members he shook hands, while saying pleasant things 
to them. 

In one case a Boer said to him, " I would be fight- 
ing you if I had not got consumption." The general 
replied, " Oh, I am sorry to hear that you are ill. I 
hope you will soon get better." 

A snapshot of him receiving the surrender of Thaba 
N'chu from the landdrost would have been an inter- 
esting picture. Both men stood with their hats on the 
backs of their heads, the landdrost had his hands 
shoved deep in his pockets, and French stood with his 
legs apart like a little Colossus, looking up at the 
civilian, who was ex-President Brand's son. Presently 
the landdrost took off his hat. 

Whether General French told him to do so, or 
whether he felt the commanding influence of the gen- 
eral — who knows ? 



CHAPTER XXVI 

BRITISH OFFICERS AND CHAPLAINS 

The British officer went to South Africa eagerly '* to 
enjoy a little sport." And he went there confidently, 
leaving word in England that he would *' be back by 
Christmas." 

He has had a great deal of sport since then, and he 
has given up speculating about when he will come 
home ; but he has learned a lot, unlearned a lot, and is 
vastly more valuable to his country than when he first 
threw aside his sword, and smudged his helmet-spike 
and the stars on his shoulders. 

He has had a great deal more practical professional 
experience than has come to any other men in the other 
armies of the world, and yet — and here's the whole 
trouble — he feels no more like a professional soldier 
than before. He is still an amateur, by whom the 
studies, the periodical literature, the " shop " discus- 
sions, and the multitudinous moot points of military 
science are both unloved and unknown. 

As a man the British officer is superb. 

He will do his duty. He does not fear the Boers or 

239 



240 BRITISH OFFICERS AND CHAPLAINS 

death. He sets the finest example of unwavering pa- 
tience and manly courage to a body of privates already 
richer in those qualities than any others in Europe ; 
but he is thinking of the hounds, of polo, of cricket, of 
Goodwood and Ascot — of anything .except of making 
soldiering his life-work and the ladder to a career. 

The disappointment of the Colonial officers was pain- 
ful when they discovered that the average British officer 
was a tyro at the game, like themselves. 

I came to know several bright Colonial officers, and 
though they recovered from their earliest notion that 
the regular officer was overbearing and stupid, they 
never changed their opinion that he ought to know 
about fighting as a profession — and did not. 

These Colonials were of this type : they hungered to 
be near the Regulars and to fight beside them, and they 
spent their days watching the troops from the Mother 
Country in order to master every detail of regular 
regimental and camp life. Whenever they could do 
so, they would walk through the nearest camp of 
" Tommies," and then go back and say to their fellow- 
officers : *' They are having a new kind of inspection 
over there — inspecting kits — let us have it ; " or to the 
privates : " Boys, the Regulars don't go to bathe in a 

d mob as we do ; they go in marching order, the 

same as they would go on parade, only without their 
arms. We must do so, too ; we must not let them 
get the laugh on us," 



BRITISH OFFICERS AND CHAPLAINS 241 

The Colonial private is always as eager as his officer 
to do his best and learn his utmost, and no work was 
too hard for any of them, if it was in the direction of 
learning to be ** like the fellows from home." 

At first, the Regular officer (who has the race-caution 
against leaping into indiscriminate friendships) held aloof 
from the Colonial, and the Colonists used to remark, 
" You can get diamonds out of the De Beers safe easier 
than conversation out of a British officer." But the 
compulsory bed-fellowships of a campaign, and the 
rough work of war done side by side, soon led the cau- 
tious Regular to pick out the good fellows among the 
auxiliaries, and to make friends of them. 

Then it was that the Colonial, full of the most ear- 
nest soldierly ambition (though he was a doctor or an 
architect at home), discovered that the men whom he 
had looked up to as so many little gods of war, wanted 
always to talk of sport and speculation, love and good 
dining — but never of war. 

I am not leaving it to be inferred that the Colonial 

officer or private is a better fighting-man, all in all, 

than the Regular ; but it is true that both have their 

strong points of superiority. The Colonials fell into 

the Boers' methods of rough warfare, and were able to 

match the Boers' game more quickly — and, to the last, 

they were able to fight the Boers more economically 

than the Regulars. That is merely saying that they 

fitted very well into South African warfare ; a different 
16 



242 BRITISH OFFICERS AND CHAPLAINS 

thing from saying that they would all prove as valuable 
in a European war. 

One thing is certain: of two sad deficiences of the 
army — scouting and strategy — the Colonials filled up 
one empty space. They added excellent scouts to the 
force. 

Scouting at the beginning of the war, on one side of 
South Africa, was the most grotesque farce imaginable. 
The British had a lot of men chosen for their ability to 
speak Dutch, which was a dangerous quality in a re- 
bellious Dutch colony, and their knowledge of the 
country, which would have been of more value had the 
men been of a higher grade of mental development. 
When they were not drawing absolutely ridiculous 
maps, as to the accuracy of every point in which no 
two ever agreed, they used to be sent " to draw the 
enemy's fire.*' This latter trick was looked upon as a 
triumph of genius, and perhaps it was, but some of us 
never could quite grasp its value in the way it was 
done. It was different when the Australians and Cana- 
dians, New Zealanders, and Africanders got to work. 
They used to swarm over the enemy's country in ones 
and twos, defying the cowardly Boers, stampeding the 
families, living on the fat of the land, and mastering 
the topography ; indeed, some of them could find their 
way about at night like cats. 

The cowboys, bushrangers, and Africanders all took 
naturally to fighting on their bellies, to getting and 



BRITISH OFFICERS AND CHAPLAINS 243 

keeping excellent cover, and to shooting only when 
there was something to aim at, instead of emptying 
their rifles at rocks and sage-brush by the hour. 

One of the best points about the Colonial marks the 
difference between the character of the self-reliant pio- 
neers in new lands and the dependent masses in old 
countries. It may be that European armies will never 
be stocked with men of such independence and self- 
confidence as not to care whether their officers are 
with them or absent, are alive or dead. Yet it was this 
quality which made possible much of the work done 
by the Colonials. 

Take, for instance, the widely loose formation in 
which such super-excellent troops as Brabant's Horse 
went into action. I mention that body, because it was 
officered by Imperial officers — by Regulars who had 
the modesty and wisdom not to try to alter the Colo- 
nial's methods, but simply to drill and train and dis- 
cipline him for camp life and the rough essentials of 
organisation, and then to make the most of his rough 
but efficient and successful methods in warfare. 

These Colonials went into action so spread out that 
a company covered nearly a mile of single line, and the 
captain was often both unseen and unheard by his men. 
In this way the men of the troop missed more bullets 
than they caught, had as fair a chance for their better 
marksmanship as the Boers had for their poor shooting, 
disguised their real strength, or weakness of numbers, 



244 BRITISH OFFICERS AND CHAPLAINS 

just as the Boers did, and still remained, as they began, 
with the advantage of being better shots and braver 
men. 

There is not a feature of all this that the more keen 
and ambitious British officers in South Africa have 
not noted and applied to the methods of their own 
men — which is one reason why I say they are of greater 
value to Great Britain than when they left these shores 
for a " bit of sport " that was to last till Christmas. 

Some of the worst faults in the British army at the 
beginning of the war had their source in race pecu- 
liarities, for the Anglo-Saxon is always unprepared 
for war, and always is willing to take it on before he is 
prepared. He always has an immeasurable contempt 
for his antagonist as a fighter, and such a monumental 
conceit of his own abilities that he invariably enters 
upon a war as if it were to be a military promenade, 
and over in a few weeks. 

But this does not excuse the generalship which 
marches a force of foot against the most mobile foe in 
Christendom, which sets an army going without tents, 
overcoats, or sufficient food, which slavishly clings to 
a railway as if it were an essential wing of the army, 
and then persists in frontal attacks and bull-dog assaults, 
as if strategy could only be practised by a rude and 
ignorant enemy. 

I suggest no one by this category, for such mistakes 
and worse were not confined to any one leader. Not 



BRITISH OFFICERS AND CHAPLAINS 245 

even a born soldier and a great one, like Lord Roberts, 
can move six or seven columns and capture two foreign 
countries without mistake, if the only instinctive, keen, 
and practised generals under him are a French, a 
Macdonald, a Kelly-Kenny, an Ian Hamilton, and a 
Pole-Carew. 

The result was that in four weeks, while the British 
were at Bloemfontein, they botched the subjection of 
the conquered half of the Free State, were fooled with 
a lot of antiquated rifles handed in by men who kept 
their Mausers and continued to use them, suffered the 
Kornespruit surprise, failed to relieve Broadwood at 
that place, and were debited with the unpardonable 
mishap at Karree Siding. 

But the only men who have not been improved are 
the Tommies. I do not know how you could improve 
" Tommy " without refitting him with a bigger brain — 
and then he would be another fellow, not so good in 
some ways, though better in others. Perhaps your 
old Indian officers stand beside Tommy in generally 
unimprovable excellence. They struck me from the 
first as more practised, more resourceful, and much 
more nearly of the spirit of professionals than the rest. 

But all the officers are better soldiers for having been 
in South Africa. There they learned that a mere 
good opinion of yourself is not the best weapon in war, 
and that even an odorous, unwashed Boer, with no 
other science than that of a hunter, can take a lot of 



246 BRITISH OFFICERS AND CHAPLAINS 

beating — with a deal of thinking and planning and loss 
of men thrown in. 



Some of our padres on the field came to me about a 
paragraph that was seen in one of the London dailies 
which reached us at the front, and that was ricochetted 
all over Great Britain, bringing complaint and denun- 
ciation on their devoted heads, and dismay into pious 
circles at home. 

Our padres know that I admire every one whom I 
have met among them, and will right them if I can. 
The bomb that has been thrown, like a Boer shell at a 
red-cross flag, into their company is of this fashion. 
The writer describes a church parade in camp, in Natal, 
where, between battles, a general and his command 
were drawn up to hear the word of God. 

" It was one of those occasions," says the eloquent 
correspondent, " when a fine preacher might have given 
comfort and strength where both were sorely needed, 
and have printed on many minds a permanent impres- 
sion. The bridegroom opportunity had come. But 
the Church had her lamp untrimmed. A chaplain with 
a raucous voice discoursed on the details of * the siege 
and surrender of Jericho.' The soldiers froze into 
apathy and, after a while, the formal perfunctory service 
reached its welcome conclusion. As I marched home 
an officer said to me, * Why is it, when the Church 
spends so much on missionary work among the 



BRITISH OFFICERS AND CHAPLAINS 247 

heathen, she does not take the trouble to send good 
men to preach to her own sons in time of war ? ' " 

Of course, it is wholly impossible to defend a 
Church which sends to the front a man whose voice is 
displeasing to one of the war correspondents. And I 
am not going to attempt to justify a clergyman for 
selecting a theme of battle when he addresses a multi- 
tude of soldiers. 

What seems to me a great pity is, that this corre- 
spondent happened upon this clergyman upon that 
Sunday, and a greater pity is that he should have 
drawn up from this single case an indictment against all 
the clergy who are with our armies. 

For my part, I found no lack of "good men" in 
Methuen's army, and I have not noticed a departure 
from the rule in Lord Roberts's immediate command. 
Some of us, who have been attached to the western 
forces all the time, have more than once had occasion 
to call attention to the zealous, unselfish, and noble 
work of not only the regular commissioned chaplains 
who are with us, but of the volunteer clergy as well. 

There has, it is true, been some kindly disagreement 
among the onlookers as to whether it behoved clergy- 
men to advance with the troops into the heat of battle, 
there to minister to the dying while bullets shredded 
the air, and men were falling around them. For we 
have chaplains who have done this, and chaplains who 
have served as "gallopers," dashing in and out of 



248 BRITISH OFFICERS AND CHAPLAINS 

awful danger in the worst of all the engagements. This 
was only when some one must — and there was no one 
else. Perhaps they should have stayed at the field hos- 
pital — it is not for me to say — but only think how im- 
possible it must be for men who have literally shoul- 
dered death aside in battle to fail to reach the soldier's 
heart in their sermons ! 

There have been not only fighting chaplains, but 
chaplains who have zealously remained in the near rear 
to succour the wounded and dying as fast as they were 
brought out of the volcanoes of shot and shell ; we 
have enjoyed the sermons of both sorts, for both have 
chosen their themes and arguments to suit and to stir 
the soldier mind ; but I do not remember to have 
known or heard of a single chaplain who deserves the 
reflected odium which my gifted comrade's criticism is 
said to have cast back upon them all. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

A WORD OF COMPLAINT, AND ANOTHER OF PRAISE 

Battered externally, disordered inside, unable to 
digest food for weeks, nursing bruises and ailments, 
half a dozen at once, I look upon the war as having ill 
repaid me for the kindly and jubilant tone in which I 
have dealt with it. And, oh ! how sick of it I grew to 
be — how deadly, unutterably sick of it ! In this strain 
I wrote from Bloemfontein at the end of April ; and 
this was not all. I continued as foUoAvs : — the long 
months of sand diet and hard faring under Methuen 
took from me a stomach which an ostrich would have 
envied, and exchanged for it a second-hand, worn-out 
apparatus which turns upside down at the approach of 
any food except diluted milk. 

A novel method of alighting from a Cape car tinto a 
trench with the cart on top of me left me one-legged 
for five weeks, after which I found myself with a low- 
class, no-account limb in which I have no confidence. 
Upon my recovering this inferior and makeshift other 
leg, my horse shot me into a wire fence which tore 

both arms into shreds, painted one thigh like an ome- 

249 



250 COMPLAINT AND PRAISE 

lette, and the other like a South African sunset, and 
left me an internal fracture which I must keep as a 
perpetual souvenir of what we are all beginning to 
speak of as " the bore war." 

Try to imagine the spirits of a man fashioned in the 
image of his Creator who finds himself thus gradually 
changing into an exhibit for a medical museum, and 
you begin to obtain a glimpse of the fatigue with which 
I now view this war. 

After Bloemfontein we all felt that we had seen by 
far the best and liveliest of it. There could be no more 
new scenes or surroundings in what was to come. The 
Boer would hide, the veldt would reach away, the val- 
iant Briton would endure — on and on and on ; no one 
knew how far ; no one knew how long ! There might 
be one more great battle, or there might not. And 
then we might see six months or a year of petty, pif- 
fling guerilla work — by little bands, all over the veldt 
— and this final protracted stage would be attended by 
all the discomforts of campaigning in a desert which 
was introduced to us as a baked and dusty Sahara, but 
was soon to be a wet, soggy expanse, growing colder 
and colder, until daily for weeks the pickets should be 
found frozen to death at their posts. 

What an outlook ! What a prospect for description 
by one who has seen it all and endured it all — except 
the worst of the cold. 

There are other monotonies — such as seeing your 



COMPLAINT AND PRAISE 251 

dearest friend brought back dead — just as surely as you 
make a friend ; such as seeing other correspondents 
taking ill and going home — or to the hospitals ; such 
as going a day or two without food, or a night or two 
in bed with a pool to lie in and a rain-storm for cover. 
And then the private sicknesses and accidents, and the 
public checks and disasters. How all of it gets on one's 
nerves and grinds and tears them — until one loathes 
the break of a nev^ day, the recurrence of meal-times, 
the daily struggle with the censor over the last petty 
sniping ; yes, even the bugle-calls for bed ! 

That is morbid, abnormal. I know it. The more 
abnormal it is the more it brings out the picture. 

Seven months of our experience would not leave 
anything normal, except a mummy or a goat. We 
were all sick. Some were sick with disease, most were 
sick of the war, and many were sick in both senses. 
I could forge thousands of signatures to that statement, 
and you might publish them. You would not hear a 
protest from any one. 

This was the frame of mind I took with me out of 
Bloemfontein, with its 5,000 enteric patients, its mad- 
deningly dull routine of life, and the unbroken horizon 
of monotony ahead of its stagnant conquerors. All 
around the town lay the veldt, with camps in clusters 
on every hand. We who were in town had been say- 
ing that there must be less monotony in these camps, 
where the drinking water was not poison, where the 



252 COMPLAINT AND PRAISE 

Boers relieved the situation by occasional sniping, and 
where everybody stopped the farmers on their way to 
market and bought all the produce we so sadly lacked 
in town. 

But we had not been out on the veldt since Korne- 
spruit, since which disaster the rains had set in steadily 
and cold weather had come. 

The train pulled out for its eight- or nine-hour journey 
to Norvals Pont and Naauwpoort, and we looked out 
of the windows. What did we see ? Nothing but an 
illimitable spongy, stodgy bog, with a driving cold rain 
beating upon it. And living upon it, without tents, 
were soldiers — soldiers everywhere. Mentally I asked 
forgiveness for having, during even one moment, 
thought of my own discomforts and worries. Some of 
those men had been here guarding the railway a whole 
month. They had begun the task immediately at the 
end of the awful strain of the Field-Marshal's progress 
from Graspan to Bloemfontein, when they marched as 
no Europeans ever marched before, and were starved as 
none ever should be again. 

Now the bitterly cold driving rains had come and 
turned the veldt into a marsh. And here I found them 
like so many half-drowned rats, wet as the veldt beneath 
them, wet as the air around them, shivering, playing 
drum tunes with their teeth, coughing, walking, and 
stamping to keep warm — doing everything except com- 
plaining. 



COMPLAINT AND PRAISE 253 

I ? My complaints? Why, beside those men, I was 
a duke with a palace of comforts. And if I had their 
complaints to make instead of my own, I should 
have been under and not a-top of the wicked, cruel 
veldt. 

And these were Guards, mind you — the few first 
thousands spread over the first few miles ; Grenadiers, 
Scots, Coldstreams ! " London pets " you have often 
called them ; '' tin soldiers," and you have laughed at 
them in your London homes and newspapers. Well, 
they did not complain at that, and they are not com- 
plaining at this. The officers were glad to take any- 
thing we could give them to read, and the men did not 
spurn small offerings of tobacco, but it is only just to 
say that none of them asked for anything. 

Have you thought of what the Guards did in this 
war? Has any one taken the trouble to tell a Httleof 
the tale which, once told, would make every English- 
man ashamed who even called them " pets " or " feather- 
bed soldiers " ? It was the Guards who bore the bloody 
brunt of the fight at Belmont. It was the Guards who 
were to the fore in the awful fight at Modder River. 
It was the Guards and one or two other sets of fighters 
who held back the Boers at Maaghersfontein. It was 
the Guards who broke all records in the march from 
Kimberley to Bloemfontein. After that they marched 
and fought to the Transvaal and from Waterval border 
to Koomatieport — the last stretch being 146 miles 



254 COMPLAINT AND PRAISE 

walked in 13 days, over mountains and carrying 5-inch 
siege guns and naval 12-pounders, forty miles being 
done on a road they made for themselves. From May 
until October, when I last heard from them, they had 
not seen a tent ; after Modder they only slept eight 
nights in tents. What think you of that as a record 
for feather-bed pressers, pets, and home-guards ? 

Down the line we came to a station and camp which 
presented a picture of misery as complete as any that I 
ever saw in Chinese slum, Whitechapel alley, or negro 
barracks in New York. It was misery pared down to 
the raw, though none of its sufferers seemed aware of it. 
The beastly veldt was a mosaic of little pools and sod- 
den tufts of sage. Upon this walked two or three 
companies of soldiers. The rain beat upon everybody 
and everything furiously, and an eager wind slapped 
and whipped it about. There were three or four shel- 
ters. One, the largest, was made by throwing a tar- 
paulin sheet over two piles of boxes. It was only 
breast high, and covered sopping wet ground, but it 
served as the mess-room and retreat for the officers, 
who came out, by the way, in their wringing wet 
clothes to ask us the usual shop-worn questions about 
the latest rumour that Mafeking was relieved, and an- 
other that Buller had at last succeeded in doing some- 
thing. 

I could see into their tent, and noticed that they 
lived on bully beef, tinned milk, tea, and jam — delicious 



COMPLAINT AND PRAISE 255 

things for a picnic — if the picnic does not last seven 
months on end. 

Each of the other two shelters was made by throw- 
ing a porous blue army blanket over a pole and pinning 
down the sides so as to make a burrow two feet high 
and six feet long. It seemed to me that it must be 
slightly wetter and a hundred-fold more disagreeable 
in such a hutch than out on the veldt. It was out on 
the veldt that we saw the Tommies — the poor, neg- 
lected, all suffering, woebegone-looking, but none the 
less devil-may-care Tommies. I wonder if the kindly 
society which is clamouring to know what ill-treatment 
our horses suffer would continue to worry itself about 
the horses after seeing the men ? 

Perhaps they would, though the fact is there is never 
any unnecessary ill-treatment of a horse in this army, 
whereas the men — but that is the story I am telling. 

The Tommies were walking up and down in the rain. 
Their overcoats were not only soaking wet, but, for 
some strange military reason, were split behind straight 
up to the small of each man's back so as to expose all 
of each leg to the wet. A few had put blankets over 
their coats, and were also walking, walking, walking. 
One was seated on a box with an audience of three 
others on boxes, and was singing a music-hall ditty 
vigorously through his nose. Several who walked 
about were whistling. All seemed either very happy 
or reasonably so. I can no more account for their 



256 COMPLAINT AND PRAISE 

spirits than I can explain the motive of the lion tamer's 
virago wife who cried "coward ! " at him when he left 
her in the middle of an extra long curtain lecture to 
go and sleep in the lion's cage. 

They had been soaking wet and chilled to the bone 
for days. They could cook nothing, boil nothing, heat 
nothing, for not a dry thing with which to make a fire 
could be found upon the soaking veldt. They doubt- 
less had plenty to eat, but it was all tinned stuff, and 
must have been taken cold and eaten, each thing by 
itself, without a chance of making toothsome combina- 
tions. Plenty were dying, plenty were sickening, 
others must have felt very uncomfortable ; yet those 
who were of the mettle to survive were whistling, sing- 
ing, and cracking jokes. They are welcome to crack 
one at me for speaking of my own troubles, where men 
have to live, as I saw, perhaps, 20,000 living, between 
Bloemfontein and Norvals Pont. 

"The Tommies always whistle and sing when it 
rains," said one of the ofHcers on the train. That 
I had not noticed ; but I will say for Tommy that, 
except for two or three days after our reverse at 
Maaghersfontein, I never saw him when he was not 
cheerful. 

Tommy is the queerest human I ever saw — the most 
inexplicable. When his rations are down to two bis- 
cuits in three days, you may hear the fact mentioned, 
in an incidental way, by a man here and there, but np 



COMPLAINT AND PRAISE 257 

one growls about it, as sailors would do. When 
Tommy is marched in suffocating heat until his mates 
begin to drop out of the ranks or fall on their faces 
from the ranks, a play of repartee will spring up among 
them, and comical ideas and phrases will fly from line 
to line. Tommy is seldom witty — at least, I have 
heard little genuine wit in the ranks — but he is droll 
and comical in a high degree. 

I wonder if I told you of the talk I heard when the 
first Reservists came to Modder? " I say, mate," said 
a Tommy, " them blooming new chaps says they're 
a-bustin' for a fight. I've always noticed that men in 
barricks and men fresh from 'ome is sure to be bustin* 
for a fight. Well, let 'em bust. I know what we're 
bustin for ; we're bustin' to git 'ome." 

And here's another sample. Some one discovers 
that it is Sunday. It is a little after twelve o'clock. 
He announces these facts. " I can see the people at 
'ome," another replies. "They've all got bloomin' 
button-'oles, and they're standing around waitin' for 
the pubs to open." 

Tommy wots not the past, and heeds not the future 
— that has been truly said of him. Yesterday's battle 
and its terrors, and the fact that only nine men are in 
the tent that held sixteen last night, seem to impress 
him much less than a sudden flight of locusts. Of the 
battle he casually remarks, " It certainly were a bit 
thick, sir." But the locusts excite him wonderfully. 
17 



258 COMPLAINT AND PRAISE 

I have seen all the men of the Coldstream and the 
Scots Guards out of their tents in their undershirts 
and breeches, whacking away at billions of locusts 
with bayonets, sheaths, saucepans, haversacks, helmets, 
braces, sticks, short shovels, tunics, boots — with every- 
thing they could lay hands on — and all shouting and 
laughing like schoolboys. You have heard what one 
said when he saw his first locusts : " Blime me," said 
he, *' if even the blooming butterflies ain't khaki down 
ere. 

But not even to-day does Tommy consider. 

We have been halted after dark knowing that there 
was to be a fight at daybreak. Firewood was to be 
gathered, fires made, tea and biscuits served, and when 
this was over it was half-past eight o'clock. The ob- 
vious thing was to turn in with one's wretched blanket 
against the eager, nipping night, and get all the sleep 
possible. Yet at ten, even at eleven o'clock, I have 
awakened and seen large groups of Tommies around 
the feeble embers of the fires, smoking and jawing and 
yarning, while in the darker distance others sat in little 
bunches talking of the ways of their officers, the pranks 
of their mates in barracks — or what they would eat 
and drink if they were to land in London that night. 

What Tommy is made of I don't know. I recall 
one brutal night in the veldt during a flying march 
when I was separated from my kit, and had only a 
borrowed mackintosh to cover me — or to put beneath 



COMPLAINT AND PRAISE 259 

me on the wet ground, as I pleased. A whole army 
lay in blankets around me, and as I could not sleep I 
made half-a-dozen long tours among my neighbours. 
Certainly a quarter — perhaps a third of the men — were 
neither asleep nor trying to be. Some were standing 
in groups, some were sitting up and gossiping, one 
was actually singing for the entertainment of a little 
crowd. In the morning I got on my horse fevered 
and tired to the marrow, but Tommy did an eleven 
miles' march under a blazing sun, with repartee fling- 
ing up and down the ranks like heat lightning in a 
summer evening sky. 

He goes about his work like a cog in a machine. 
He may be awakened at half-past two o'clock in the 
morning, or at five, but he rises just as readily, with a 
ripple of good-natured comment in the ranks, broken 
only at great distances by the snarl of an ill-tempered, 
exceptional being. There is always a good deal of to- 
do about missing bits of accoutrement, but he is fully 
harnessed, like a cart horse, in ten minutes' time, and 
waiting for his coffee or his cocoa. He may be roused 
for battle, or for a blistering march, or for a quiet day 
in camp, but his demeanour is the same, precisely, 
under all circumstances. For imperturbability he is a 
wonder. He drinks when he gets a chance, as we have 
seen in London, but he goes without a drop of spirits 
as philosophically as he gets tipsy. In town after town 
that we have come to the first order was to sell Tommy 



26o COMPLAINT AND PRAISE 

no spirits, and at times it has seemed to me hard on 
the well-behaved that they should suffer for the others 
— knowing by personal feeling how welcome a bracing 
drink is a-top of a battle or a wearing march. 

It is said that some soldiers always manage to get 
drink, by hook or crook. Perhaps they do ; but I have 
not seen six drunken soldiers in the seven months I've 
lived with them. And I have only seen one fist fight. 

Finally, Tommy is musical, but only in a way. In 
every group there would be some man who sang the 
latest music-hall songs, or one who whistled well. But 
the men seldom sang in concert either on the march 
or in camp — I mean, that I never have heard a regi- 
ment sing, or even a full company. 

Then here's to you, Tommy Atkins. I remember 
what one of you said to another as you passed my tent 
one morning, *' When you wrote 'ome, I 'ope you didn't 
tell them how blooming well up to our necks we are in 
blood ? No ? That's right. They git enough of that 
out o* the doily poipers." 

It is not often that one hears Tommy make a re- 
mark like that, suggesting that he realises his situation. 
Rather does his mental attitude always call to mind 
the bearing of the man who said to one who quarrelled 
with him : " If you hit me and I find it out, I shall do 
something to you." 

Tommy may be hit by bullets, exposure, heat, frost, 
fatigue, and all the rest, but he never finds it out. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 
RINGED ROUND BY SPIES 

The lights of the crowded and busy hotel bathed 
the broad stoep where forty men and women in evening 
dress chatted over iced beverages and burning tobacco. 

The great windows of the drawing-room flung out 
the strongest radiance, and behind them a small com- 
pany listened to a spirited ballad by the most musical 
of the guests. 

Beyond the stoep the hotel lights and the paler 
gleaming of the moon melted together among the 
shrubs and small trees of a semi-tropical garden, where 
deep shadows chequered the yellow driveway and the 
paths. 

This was in Capetown — a fair and enticing corner in 
a shabby, dusty city ; a corner all loveliness, where the 
sinister shadow of rebellion and but half-suppressed 
treason murks every moral aspect. 

" Mother," said a golden-haired German maiden, " I 

will get my wrap and walk out a little with Captain 

Simple, of the Southumberland Rifles." 

" Yes, darling ; cover up warmly, dear — but as I was 

961 



262 RINGED ROUND BY SPIES 

saying, Major Candour " and the jewel-decked 

matron turned again to her tete-a-tete with an officer in 
a corner of the stoep. 

''Where's father?" the daughter inquired, as she 
again passed her mother on her way to walk in the 
moonlit garden. 

" He's taking a little something with Colonel Stone- 
head, in the smoking-room, darling ; don't disturb him. 
As I was just remarking, Major, I know the Boers, and 
if you go and bombard Colesberg, and do such things 
all over the Free State — destroying towns and houses 
— they will become very cruel and bitter. They will 
kill all their prisoners, and they will rouse Cape Colony 
to help them." 

"■ But we shall do nothing of the sort." 

" Ah, I don't know. Major. Perhaps you have not 
heard that General French is asking permission to 
shell Colesberg ? Ah, dear me ! I am so afraid he 
will do it — and we shall have the whole Colony to 
fight." 

" My dear madam," Major Candour replied, " I was 
at the Castle all the afternoon. I know everything 
that is going on. The generals all have orders not to 
bombard any towns or damage any property." 

" Oh, I am so glad," the matron answered. " I was 
sure we would not make such a mistake. What a beau- 
tiful night it is, Major. But yet it is chilly. If you 
will excuse me, I will take something to put over my 



RINGED ROUND BY SPIES 263 

darling's head, so that she sha'n't catch cold. Won't 
you join my husband and the Colonel in the smoking- 
room ? ** 

In the smoking-room the husband, Mr. Dinkel, has 
assured Colonel Stonehead that the Boers are in reality 
one-third negro in blood, two-thirds devils in morals, 
and three-thirds savages in their mode of living. '' I 
hade them like boison," he says ; " I haf sbent dwenty 
years mit *em, and I know dem like a pook. Shoot 
dem down, is vot I say ; kill dem like rats." 

The Colonel, delighted with these sentiments, next 
proceeds to explain that Lord Roberts will quickly 
end the war. He says that the Field-Marshal will 
presently be joined by French, and an immense army 
will move into the Free State by way of Enslin and 
Ramdam. The date of the movement he knows, but 
may not tell, though it is not far off. 

Much more of such information, gleaned at the head- 
quarters, but not known in England, or even in the 
army itself, does the frank Colonel yield under the con- 
tagious candour of the astute Dinkel. 

Out in the quiet garden, where the broad banana 
leaves and the fans of the palms are silhouetted against 
the softly luminous sky, the captain and the maiden 
are strolling. 

What a pretty picture two youths of opposite sexes 
make when Cupid's conditions are all fulfilled — and 
they are alone together — and the lights are low ; and 



264 RINGED ROUND BY SPIES 

especially when he typifies Valour in uniform, and she 
suggests Beauty linked with Innocence ! 

" No," she said, ** you must not ; let me walk by 
myself. We do not know each other well enough for 
that. Besides, you will go away to-morrow, and we 
may never see each other again." 

** I'm not going to-morrow," he said. 

" Why, yes," she replied. " You must start to- 
morrow if Lord Roberts moves forward on Sunday." 

" I got word to-day that he starts in just a week. I 
can have three more lovely days with you. Truly 
— on honour — he does not start until a week from 
to-day." 

" I am glad — if you are glad," the maiden said. 
" But, now, we must go indoors. It is really too chilly 
for me out here." 

An hour flew, and ten o'clock came. The Dinkels 
met in the room of the father and mother. " Vot did 
you found owd ? " he asked, first of his wife and, next, 
of his daughter. *' So," he said, '' Vot blamed fools ! 
Dey vill gif avay their stomachs if you ask them. You 
found owd dot Colesberg don't get bomparded. I 
found owd dot French choins Lord Ropperts, und, my 
leetle darling, you make luf to dot silly cabtain and he 
told you choost when Lord Ropperts is advancing. 
Veil, ve can gif our friends in Bretoria all der news do- 
morrow." 

This is a kodak snapshot of one foreign family in 



RINGED ROUND BY SPIES 265 

one hotel in Capetown ; but there were many foreign 
families in several hotels in that city. 

Come up to the front if you wish to see how spies 
work. 

There ! we are passing De Aar, once the advance 
base of the Western forces. That is where the spies 
and rebels held high-day and holiday, for the British 
were then as green as grass. That is where bearded 
Boers used to stroll about the great camp, noting the 
arrival of the horses and mules, watching the stocking 
of the sheds with harnesses, bridles, and saddles, count- 
ing the boxes of ammunition, and the hillock heaps of 
biscuit boxes. They said they had come to see if we 
wanted any potatoes or butter, or would not like to pay 
them £2i, each for a few ;^5 horses. All day long they 
used tohelio what we were doing, or ride to the nearest 
rebel headquarters and report more in detail. 

Only Heaven, good luck, and Boer cowardice ever 
saved De Aar and its two million pounds* worth of 
stores. 

In time the British organised armies, and to go with 
them they formed their transport services. They hired 
carts and men from the country around ; negroes to 
drive, and any sort of white men that happened along 
to serve as conductors. In Natal it is fair to suppose 
that they salaried a few traitors and spies in this way, 
because it is said that on that side Englishmen are all 
English, Scotchmen are all Scotch, and all white men 



266 RINGED ROUND BY SPIES 

are white. It is different in the three-quarters Dutch 
towns of the Colony, and if many of the transport men 
were not in sympathy with the Boers, it was due to 
British good luck rather than to good management. 

Even in the employment of scouts, the British estab- 
lished the doubtful rule, " that they must know the 
country and speak the Taal " (the lingo of the Boer). 

The British fought battles, and now and then they 
halted. 

At once the farmers and the shop and hotel keepers 
came forward and said : " We are so glad you have 
come," adding, always, that they were English or pro- 
English. They always said that the Boers had been 
very kind and just, and had taken nothing, but that 
the " Tommies," oh, my ! Fruit and fowls and forage 
had been stolen right and left — and who was to pay 
the bills? The British promised to pay, and bought 
their produce, rented their houses, took rooms in their 
taverns, and always had them hanging about, listening, 
questioning, watching. The longer they rested, the 
more their suspicions were aroused. Lights in the 
houses of their new friends were flashed toward the 
Boers at night, mounted men dashed away when they 
approached some houses, Boers swam the river to and 
from other cottages, helios flashed on distant hills ; 
negroes came in and gave themselves up to loaf about 
for a day — and disappear ! 

And yet the British continued to enrich everybody, 



RINGED ROUND BY SPIES 267 

treated every man as if he was as guileless as them- 
selves, and hampered no one with distrust — except 
the correspondents of the London newspapers. In re- 
turn they got worthless information and maps, and lies 
about the Boers. 

The British were ringed around by a circle of sleep- 
less eyes. They never made a move without presently 
seeing that the Boers were prepared for it. 

To fight an invisible enemy was terribly wearying, 
but to feel as if the very air they breathed was a con- 
ductor of intelligence to that enemy was too uncanny 
for words. Once a colonel begged of his general to 
allow him to do a pretty stroke ''on his own." He 
wanted to make a night attack on a certain kopje. 

*' You may," said the general, ** if you tell all your 
officers precisely what you are doing, and also make it 
known to the colonels whose regiments are on either 
side of yours." 

The colonel in question made the move without ever 
taking a soul, except his general, into his confidence. 
He was trapped, encircled, killed ; and his command 
suffered awful slaughter. Said one of the Boers who 
helped to remove the dead : *' We have never stayed 
on that kopje at night before, but we got word at seven 
o'clock that this regiment was coming at eleven, so we 
kept in our places." 

That is offered as a sample of the British experiences 
—not as an extraordinary case. 



26S RINGED ROUND BY SPIES 

The British were fighting in an enemy's country, but 
they could never grasp the fact in all its fell signifi- 
cance. They could not believe that there was a lie on 
nearly every tongue which spoke fair, a trick in almost 
every offer of help, a double-face above many a collar 
in our auxiliary service, a dagger up half the sleeves 
that went with the open hands they grasped. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

THE ROMANCE OF FUNK 

Young Cockran was not obliged to do the work of 
a war correspondent, which was good luck for him ; but 
he always boasted of it wherever he went, which was 
very bad taste. 

He was something or other in the De Beers Com- 
pany, and his salary went on while Kimberley was be- 
sieged, and he waited to get back there. You could 
not detect the coward in him — you never would have 
suspected him to be a coward — so much are cowards 
like other men except just at the moment when the 
pinch comes. 

Indeed, in all the war, I only heard of a few cases of 

uncovered or confessed cowardice, and the worst of 

those came to light when there was a sudden short 

epidemic of funk that infected a mass of men. One of 

these men, being found hidden behind a vaal bush 

and being urged back to the firing line by his captain, 

replied, " You'll have to drag me back or kick me, sir. 

I am a louse, and I admit it. I am in a horrible funk, 

and I can't help it." 

Cockran, the correspondent, went to report a certain 

369 



270 THE ROMANCE OF FUNK i 

battle which began at daybreak just as he was march- 
ing in the forefront of the army, so that when the firing 
burst forth Hke the all-enveloping steam from an ex- 
ploded boiler he was in the worst of it. He lay down 
like every one else, but when the soldiers began to find 
their feet and rise, crouched double, to run forward a 
few yards at a time, he lay still. His heart and brain 
were paralysed by an almost mortal funk. A surgeon- 
major happened along, and said, while standing in a 
driving rain of Mauser bullets, " Hello ! whereabouts 
are you wounded ?" 

*' I ain't wounded at all," Cockran replied, '' I'm 
frightened to move. There's nothing the matter with 
me but funk." 

The surgeon-major was moving away with disgust 
writ in capital lines all over his face, when Cockran 
called out to him, '* Are you looking after the wounded ? 
Let me help you." And up he jumped and began 
walking about in a leisurely way among the flying shot 
looking for wounded "Tommies." Some stretcher- 
bearers found a bunch of battered and bleeding men 
far forward, where the bullets were fiendishly thick, 
and Cockran ran there and helped to lift the poor fel- 
lows upon the stretchers. One bearer was keeled over 
with a ball in his skull, and Cockran took his place be- 
tween the handles of the last stretcher, and helped carry 
it to the dressing-ground beyond the farthest line of 
tiny sand fountains tossed up by the bullets. Once 



THE ROMANCE OF FUNK 271 

out of danger, he stayed out. And next morning— he 
ran away to Capetown. 

" My nerves are torn to shreds," he confided to me 
on that morning, as he overtook me in his cart, and 
gave me a Hft to my regimental camp ; " and I have 
had enough. I have only seen one fight, but I am fed 
up on war already. Now I am going to Hve with the 
ladies at the Mount Nelson Hotel." 

'' You behaved mighty bravely in the fight yester- 
day." 

'* Bravely ! " he repeated, with a sneer. " I am 
about as brave as those steenbok that got caught be- 
tween the two armies at Graspan, and went mad with 
fright, and finally charged the Guards Brigade and 
broke away. You see, so many of my friends are 
fighting in this war that it would never have done for 
me to see nothing of it. I would have been chivvied 
out of Africa when we all came together in Kimberley 
at the finish. But I got under fire by accident, and I 
had an awful fright. Then that surgeon-major came 
along and I confessed what a funk I was in. I was so 
ashamed when I told him the truth that, though I was 
paralysed with fright, I jumped up and rushed into the 
fire and made a tremendous bluff at being brave. I 
kept up the bluff until I got out of range of the bullets, 
and then — well, my nerve is rotten, and no train in 
South Africa can run quick enough to suit me when 
once I get aboard of one." 



2/2 THE ROMANCE OF FUNK 

That is the only case I met with in the war which was 
at all akin to the imaginative descriptions of battle in- 
cidents which make up such books as " The Red Badge 
of Courage," and which crop out occasionally in the 
writings of Balzac, Zola, and the host of other authors 
who have touched more or less heavily, at times, upon 
war. I call all this thrilling fancy work the Romance 
of Funk. Its like is only to be found in books, or in 
such extraordinarily rare and modest suggestions of the 
written thing as this case of Cockran. 

'' Do not go to a war if you ever mean to write 
about it," said a clever litterateur at the outbreak of 
the Transvaal war. " You will never be able to write 
interestingly after you have seen the stupid real thing." 
He was entirely right. Never, after seeing a war, can a 
conscientious novelist produce the looked-for and con- 
ventional thing. The nonsense that is written about 
war is not alone what many a reader likes ; it is what 
most of us expect and think to be the result of invari- 
able processes of the minds of men who find themselves 
facing death in battle. The truth is that if you could 
recruit an army with poets, artists, and novelists, you 
might have such literature and swear by it. How stupid 
by comparison are the mental processes and behaviour 
of real soldiers, who have only rudimentary imagina- 
tions, who never dream, and who are trained not to 
think. Officers and '' Tommies," both have told me that 
when they are under fire if they think of their past sins 



THE ROMANCE OF FUNK 273 

or present loves—if mother, wife, or sweetheart come 
into their thoughts— they push the impulse back and 
say, " that is not in the game. I must play the game," 
and on they go with every thought of killing others, and 
never a thought of dying. 

Trained not to think, I said. Take the case of 
Trooper Metford, of the Battersby Mounted Troop. 
Fifteen men of this gallant force were under a galling 
fire from invisible Boers hidden in a clump of trees at 
Paardeberg. The colonel sent word for these troopers 
to retire, and the captain in command, while executing 
the order, saw a trooper holding an extra horse. 
" Whose ? " he asked. 
" Trooper Stevens's." 
"Where is he?" 

" Don't know ; hasn't turned up." 

Back to search for Stevens went the captain into the 

shower of scudding bullets, earning one of the greater 

number of those medals so few of which hit a mark. 

He searched the veldt until he came upon a bundle of 

khaki. It proved to be Stevens, lying with his head 

upon his folded arms, dead— to all appearances. The 

captain lifted one of the khaki arms, and from the way 

it fell when he dropped it, he fancied that there must 

be life remaining in the trooper. He actually suspected 

that— even with death singing the air full of Mauser 

music all around him— Stevens might have fallen asleep. 

He picked up a stick and whacked the trooper a smart 

18 



274 THE ROMANCE OF FUNK 

blow across the back. Instantly Stevens rolled over, 
and cried out, " What the devil are you doing? Why 
can't you let me sleep ? " 

Then he sat up and rubbed his eyes. Opening them 
at last he recognised his captain, and was ashamed. 

He was sent to the rear under arrest, and that night 
he sent to his captain to ask him to come and hear 
something very important and urgent that he had to 
say. The captain returned the answer that he never 
wished to see or speak to him or any man like him 
while he lived. On the next day the prisoner saw the 
captain passing by and yelled to him, " For God's sake 
stop, captain, as you hope for mercy yourself, stop and 
hear me." 

"Well, what is it?" 

" Have me shot, captain ; please have me shot. 
Don't let me be taken before the colonel. I cannot 
face him — never, never ! Oh, do not let the colonel 
see me, but please have me shot quick. I deserve 
to die, and I am willing, but I never could face the 
colonel." 

Evidently there was not a spark of the romance of 
funk in Trooper Stevens. He was a sleepy-head, but 
he was not a coward. 

Thus far we have found only one case that carried a 
slight suggestion of the extraordinary behaviour of the 
battle heroes of fiction. We shall not find another 
trace of the Romance of Funk in my record of the ex- 



THE ROMANCE OF FUNK 275 

periences of the men I met in the British Army in 
South Africa. 

Perhaps Englishmen are too practical. I do not 
think them too stolid or phlegmatic, but they possess 
some quality which has made it impossible for me to 
find any man who, under fire, regretted having once 
cheated a schoolmate, or bitterly recalled a hasty word 
he spoke to his mother twenty years before, or re- 
quired to be peppered with bullets in order to think of 
his sweetheart — except with the firm belief that he 
would live to marry her. 

I am not speaking now of the men who feel the 
shadow of coming death envelope them. That is an- 
other story — and a strange one. 

Some men, while they lie under fire, gather silly 
useless little heaps of stones before them — not big 
enough to shelter a rabbit ; and some drop a hint to a 
neighbour that a steel umbrella would not be a bad 
thing to have when it is raining lead, or they lie still 
and think out a new idea for a bullet-proof breastplate^ 
which they describe to you the next day ; but, as a 
rule, all are too busy shooting or leading their men to 
bother with thinking about themselves. 

The officers have had it easier in this than in most 
wars, because they have carried rifles and had a chance 
to use them. A rifle, put in a man's hand, will dispel 
a lot of funk, merely by giving him something to 
do, and turning his thoughts to business. As for 



2;6 THE ROMANCE OF FUNK 

" Tommy," he always appears to think of the danger 
after it has passed, and says to you next day, " I've 
got a bally bellyfull, and I bally well wish I was home." 
Thus he speaks on the day after a hot fight ; but on 
the day after that, when the general instructs all colo- 
nels to feel the pulses of the regiments, Tommy is 
found to be itching to give the enemy another taste of 
the British prescription : Lee-Metford and lyddite, ten 
parts of the first to one part of the second. 

" King Coffee," like sleepy-head Stevens, of whom 
I have told, presents a case to the truth of which an 
entire battalion can swear. He had sure enough funk, 
but the romantic element, with which funk is usually 
sugared over in the popular war tales, was wholly miss- 
ing. ** Coffee " is a member of the mess sergeant's 
little squad, and his business is to cook the coffee for 
the officers' mess of the Southumberland Rifles. He 
went through one battle and bore himself, to the eye 
of man, as well as any one in it. But that was merely 
because no human eye could see " the jumps " that 
had hold of him, or look into his heart, which was as 
white as milk. 

The next time the word went round at night for all 
to prepare for battle next morning, he spoke up to the 
mess sergeant, saying : " Let me stop in camp, will you, 
sergeant? I have been in one bally battle, and I don't 
like it. I don't care who knows it, I'd rather stop be- 
hind and make the coffee." He has had his way. He 



THE ROMANCE OF FUNK 277 

stops behind when fighting's on. But he is called 
" Coffee " and " King Coffee " — which most men would 
dislike (for the reason of it) more than the danger of 
death. But the majority of men have no fright under 
fire — nothing but a momentary qualm, which they can 
easily control. 

I once asked Captain Bowen, of Kimberley, to recall 
his sensations when he got his baptism. " I was lead- 
ing thirty-two men," he said, *' when the Boers opened 
on me unexpectedly in advance. I pushed ahead, and 
next met a fire on my right flank as hot as any that 
has been known in this part of the country. The bul- 
lets zipped all around me. They came in ropes. I 
gave the order for all to dismount, and my only thought 
was of my men. My God ! I thought, have I led my 
men into this trap, and am I to become responsible for 
having a lot of them killed ? We advanced as far as 
seemed reasonable, and they lay down, I giving them 
the range at which to fire. I kept myself up, on my 
knees, to overlook them, and when I observed that 
they frequently looked around to see if I was there, 
I knew that I was justified in keeping myself raised 
above them. I had been obliged to stand up to gauge 
the range, and I confess that when I did so I realised 
the fact that I was as exposed as a target. However, 
I wanted to do my duty by my men, and that impulse 
governed me then, as it did afterwards when I moved 
to and fro among them, talking to them. As to being 



2/8 THE ROMANCE OF FUNK 

shot or killed — well, of course, before I joined the force 
I had threshed that all out in my mind, and that did 
not weigh much with me afterwards." 

Captain Bowen got a very nasty wound in this his 
first important engagement. One particular Boer kept 
on shooting at him until, as the captain said, "it 
amounted to persecution." This Boer was the only 
one who showed himself. His conduct grew so annoy- 
ing, that Captain Bowen at last stood still and emptied 
his revolver at him. He did not hit the Boer, and 
when his revolver was empty the captain passed on. 
It was when he was returning that this same Boer 
landed a Mauser bullet in the captain's chin. 

In the last sentence of his account of his feelings 
when under fire is the pith of what twenty officers re- 
plied when I asked them if they were afraid when they 
were first in great danger : " I had settled all that when 
I joined the army," each one of them replied. 

A surgeon famous in Africa and America, Dr. Lind- 
ley, serving with Rimington's Scouts, said : " Once we 
advanced upon a kopje, which my commanding officer 
imaged to be unoccupied. I believed it was crowded 
with Boers. I rode up and said so to the major, but 
he afterwards told me that he did not hear me. On 
he went, and I said to myself, simply : " Oh, well, if he 
can go there so can I. Five minutes later the whole 
hill blazed with rifle fire, and we found that the enemy 
was not only in front but on both sides of us. What 



THE ROMANCE OF FUNK 279 

did I think ? Nothing. I had enough to busy me in 
looking after the wounded." 

A major of my acquaintance, who has more imagina- 
tion and a better gift of expression than the majority 
of soldiers, gave me a very interesting account of his 
sensations under fire. 

" My observation is/' said he, " that as you march 
into fire you notice the most trivial things. You say 
to yourself, ' Hello ! that man has one stirrup three 
inches lower than the other.' ' What letters were those 
on the shoulder of the man who just hurried past?' 
' That's the red and white check of the Scots Guards ; 
what's he doing here?' You see the men in front 
falling on their faces, and you think, ' That's where the 
fire is getting hot. Can't we get any forrarder than 
that ? ' You find yourself there, and you also He down 
and begin shooting. I have been where it truly 
seemed that you could not raise your fingers, spread 
wide open, without having them shot off, and I've 
simply thought, ' Not one of us will get out of this.' 
It seemed only a casual thought— not one that made 
any difference to anybody. 

" I once had a choice of being taken prisoner by the 
Boers or dashing over an exposed ridge well within 
range of a thousand of them. As I would have shot 
myself sooner than be taken, there really was no choice. 
I sprang on my horse and made the dash, fully expect- 
ing to be killed, and yet not afraid and not really 



28o THE ROMANCE OF FUNK 

thinking of it, though I want to live as much as any 
man. You do not think of it — or of home — or of 
Heaven, or of anything except of taking your part in 
whatever comes. 

"After being many hours under shell fire, once, I 
had very peculiar sensations," the major continued. 
"The strain must have been too prolonged for my 
nerves, because, I remember, I found myself saying, 
* Oh, why do not our people silence that gun which 

keeps on killing men all around me ? D that Boer 

gunner ' (you swear when the strain gets too intense — 
even if you are not a swearing man), * why don't we 

blow him to bits, d him ; he is doing too well.' 

But at the end of twelve hours — it was at Modder 
River, you see — I got tired, and I said to myself, ' I 
wish this thing would stop. I don't care which side 
wins, if they will only stop. I want a rest and a change, 
and a whiskey and soda — and a chance to walk 
about.' " 

I noticed, when I saw British officers in the company 
of ladies in the towns we took or held, that these ladies 
invariably asked to be told of some horrid experience 
or act of heroism. I noticed, as well, that their na- 
tional temperament and training always led the officers 
to begin such a tale with the phrase, " Well, you know, 
once I was in a horrible funk." That prelude was 
offered to excuse the modest story which was to follow. 
I do not believe they were often frightened — these men 



THE ROMANCE OF FUNK 2S1 

who are almost too valiant, since they seem always to 
rely upon courage, even when strategy would serve 
them better. But I can truthfully say that I was once 
in a funk, not in battle or on the way to it, but in a 
case of tremendous surprise following after a day of 
extreme nervous tension. 

By no will of mine, I had been under heavy Mauser 
and '* pom-pom " fire for hours on the previous day at 
the Modder River fight. The next day broke, and, 
having lost my saddle-horse in the battle, I strolled 
ahead of the resting army to the vacated Boer trenches 
along the river-bluff. Seeing a Free State flag waving 
above a building beyond the river, I determined to 
secure it as a trophy and a souvenir. When I broke 
through the thicket of trees and bushes, I saw regard- 
ing me a dozen unmistakable Boers. I had no doubt 
I should be killed, but this was not when I trembled, 
for a danger that is prospective is much more fearful 
than one which suddenly seizes you without warning. 
But, instead of shooting, these slouching, burly, rough- 
cast Boers called to know what I wanted. I called 
back that I would like them to send over a boat which 
was by their feet, and take me across to their shore. 
They refused. "You are more anxious to get over 
here than we are to go to your side," said a young man 
with a sense of humour. " Go up-stream and you will 
find a drift where you can walk across." The building 
by which these men stood was a hospital, they told me, 



2g2 THE ROMANCE OF FUNK 

and by a closer study of them I saw that they were 
doctors and wounded men. I had, therefore, been in 
no danger, after all. I reached the drift just as some 
of the troopers of the Ninth Lancers were crossing, 
and, except that they threatened to shoot me for not 
instantly explaining to their satisfaction who I was, 
crossed the river easily. 

Ahead lay a yellow road, and a village beyond ; a 
smiling yellow road, with enticing trees here and there, 
— where a tree is so rare that one seems almost as good 
as a park would in other lands, and quiet and peace 
brooded over all the prospect. The sole reminder of 
war was beside me, where a tavern, wrecked by shell, 
was being searched by looters, who came forth with 
bottles of beer, armfuls of cigarettes, a turkey, a bottle 
of champagne, and the like. But before me all was as 
serene as the view of a little village at home on a Sun- 
day morning. I had found an abandoned Boer horse, 
taken a saddle from a poorer beast near the river, and 
was riding to the village. The men of the Ninth 
Lancers clattered up, and were riding a few yards ahead, 
past two or three houses. Suddenly a fierce fusillade 
burst from the windows and garden walls of these cot- 
tages. The troopers swung off their horses, sank upon 
one knee each, and peppered away at their assailants. 
Bullets flew all around me, and I sat upright above 
the kneeling soldiers, a superb target, motionless, in- 
capable of movement — in a funk. Perhaps it was be- 



THE ROMANCE OF FUNK 283 

cause of the previous day's strain, and because I had 
been very long without food ; but I cannot explain it^ 
or say other than that it never happened before or 
afterwards. The Boers ran out of the backs of the houses, 
leaped upon their horses, and spurred over the veldt. 
The Lancers bolted after them, shooting as they rode. 
I was left alone upon the highway, and then the fit of 
nervousness left me as suddenly as it had come. I 
pulled a rein to turn my horse and follow the Lancers, 
when an army friend came trotting up. 

*' Hello," said he ; " they say there's food and drink 
at a tavern ahead." 

" But there are Boers in all those houses," said a 
scout, joining us. 

" Let's chance it," said I to them ; and to myself I 
whispered, " Heavens, what a funk I had ! " 



CHAPTER XXX 

A RAILWAY RECORD 

" Prince Houssan took and spread the carpet, and as soon as he had 
formed his wish, he and his officer whom he had brought with him were 
transported to the caravansary at which he and his brothers were to 
meet." — Arabian Nights' Entertainments, 

Now that we appear to see the end of the war and 
its trials and tests, we can almost confidently say of 
one of its accessories that it has been wholly admira- 
ble ; that it will be recorded in history as an almost 
perfect feature of an undertaking otherwise too much 
marred by blunders, flaws, and unanticipated obstacles. 

I refer to the Cape Government Railway system, by 
means of which the British fought a war in which they 
were obliged, as it were, to land troops and supplies at 
Gibraltar, and rush them to the Pyrenees at first and 
then on to Paris. 

As this is literally a feat which Great Britain may yet 

have to perform between those identical points in 

Europe, it is of double interest to know that Capetown 

is 600 miles from the Orange River, just as the Pyrenees 

are 600 miles from Gibraltar, and Pretoria and Paris 
284 



A RAILWAY RECORD 285 

are, respectively, 1,000 miles from Capetown and Gib- 
raltar. 

To move 200,000 troops as fast as they can be landed, 
and hurry after them their tents and guns, horses, am- 
munition, fodder, and food, would strain the resources 
of a standard gauge double-track trunk line in England ; 
yet not a hitch occurred in the performance of this 
feat by the narrow gauge single-track railway which 
was practically commandeered in South Africa. 

Which was practically commandeered as you shall 
see, and yet which continued to discharge all its 
normal functions as if there was no war to strain its 
resources. How this was done makes a wonderful tale 
of British patriotism, enthusiasm, and genius, and 
therefore one well worth the telling. 

The Cape Government railways comprise a system 
of, roughly, over 2,000 miles, which consists of three 
main lines ; one from Capetown, one from Port Eliza- 
beth, and one from East London. These so converge 
that all three terminate at Bulawayo in one direction, 
and at Johannesburg and Pretoria in the other, with a 
means of connection with Natal and Delagoa Bay. 

The war crippled these railways at the point of junc- 
tion with the railways of the Boer Republics, whose 
armed men kept forcing the paralysis further and 
further down into the colony, until at one time the 
junctions at De Aar and Naauwpoort were threatened, 
and the junction with the East London line with the 



286 A RAILWAY RECORD 

other two main lines was actually destroyed. That 
was when the Boers took Stormberg Junction. One 
result of that was that the coal supply of the colony 
from the South African mines was cut off, and there- 
after coal had to be brought from Europe — a doubly 
serious thing, because, in the first place, it became 
much more costly, and, secondly, it all had to be 
carried in the same direction as the troops and supplies, 
thus adding greatly to the difficulties of the transport 
problem. But, on the other hand, whatever southward 
progress the Boers made still left the railway touching 
the front, and thus it was that it became and remained 
one of the most important factors in the military situa- 
tion. 

The railway is presided over by the railway depart- 
ment of the Cape Colony government, whose head is 
called the Commissioner of Railways. Unfortunately 
for Great Britain the disloyal Bond was in control of 
the government when the war broke out, and the world 
witnessed the amazing spectacle of a colonial govern- 
ment at odds with the Crown, and willing to subject 
itself to a charge of common feeling with those who 
had for nearly twenty years engaged in an underground 
conspiracy to drive the English out of South Africa. 

To say the least, the Commissioner of Railways did 
not facilitate the assistance given by this railway to 
the Imperial forces. But he was rendered harmless by 
the fact that the complexion of the working force of 



A RAILWAY RECORD 287 

the system, from the executives downward, was wholly 
different — wholly loyal. 

Have the British ever soberly thought of one fact in 
connection with the past Boer supremacy in South 
Africa — and have they duly congratulated themselves 
upon it ? The fact I mean is this : that the wretched, 
solitude-seeking, unclean Boer has seen his country 
developed against his will and without his collaboration. 

The consequence is that the Uitlanders run his post- 
offices, his railways, and his telegraphs. He has not 
brain enough to distribute letters, act as guard on a 
cattle train, or carry a message from a telegraph station 
to a neighbouring farm. If a Boer possessed the brain 
for any of these more menial duties of modern life he 
could not perform them because of his innate dis- 
honesty. The other Boers would know better than to 
trust him with a letter, a telegram, or the iron in the 
railway brake, which he would steal and sell for a 
penny a pound. 

Now that South Africa has passed into British hands 
the Boer will still cling to the wilderness and its dirt, 
and will never be in the way of those who turn the 
wheel of progress. 

The task before the loyal working force of the Cape 
Government Railway was for every man to do his best, 
and for all to rise to the extraordinary occasion. They 
had to keep the civil traffic going as well as to support 
the enormous pressure of military business. It was 



288 A RAILWAY RECORD 

predicted that civil passengers, especially in the short 
suburban runs in and out of Capetown, would have to 
be carried in goods trucks, and that many trains would 
have to be discontinued, but the railway people are 
now able to boast with natural pride that they did not 
subject the regular passenger traffic to any inconveni- 
ence of any sort. So long as the lines admitted of it, 
through train service for passengers, mails, live stock, 
and goods were maintained unimpaired, except that 
live stock and goods had to give precedence to military 
traffic. 

Between November, 1899, and the following Feb- 
ruary the railway carried for the military authorities 
18,000 animals and 37,000 tons of stores on the West- 
ern line, and, on all lines, 70,000 men and 30,000 horses. 
In the first four months of this year, to April 30th, the 
lines conveyed what were equal to 60,000 ordinary 
trucks, most of them many hundreds of miles. Of 
troops there were equal to more than 11,500 standard 
four-wheeled trucks carrying 30 to 40 men each. 
Horses and mules utilised the equivalent of 14,000 
trucks, and other military traffic used what were equal 
to 35,400 trucks. Most of these vehicles also made 
long runs, Kimberley being 647 miles from Capetown, 
and Nervals Pont being about as far. These figures 
show that the railway operatives moved more than 500 
trucks daily, including Sundays. I 

It must be borne in mind that the line upon which 



A KAILWAY RECORD 289 

this feat was performed is not like one of the great 
trunk lines of Europe or America. 

It is a single track road with a ruling gradient of one 
foot in forty along the first 500 miles out of Capetown, 
the first 350 miles out of Port Elizabeth, and the first 
300 miles out of East London. The curves, equally- 
difficult to negotiate, are, some of them, of five chains 
radius, while many have a radius of six, seven, or eight 
chains. In addition, long distances separate the sta- 
tions, which makes it difficult for trains going in oppo- 
site ways to pass one another, while the narrow gauge 
(three feet and a half) prevents fast running. The 
waterless character of the country renders necessary the 
carriage of water, even for the supplies of the employes 
at some of the stations. Water also had to be carried 
to the troops at Rensburg when there was fighting on 
the northern border of the colony. 

During the earlier months of the war great anxiety 
resulted from the absolute necessity for pushing the 
rolling stock well to the front, where it was constantly 
menaced by the Boers, and had to be pushed back. 
The seizure of junctional points had to be foreseen, 
and the rolling stock required to be so distributed that 
if, and when, junctions were destroyed, there should be 
such a proportion of engines and vehicles that each of 
the three lines could continue to be utilised. 

When Stormberg Junction was broken, the manage- 
ment had sufficient rolling stock on the East London 
19 



290 A RAILWAY RECORD 

branch to operate that line, and it was because of this 
foresight and ingenuity that it was possible to hurry to 
General Gatacre the assistance he needed. But to go 
into the matter of the service the railway performed in 
connection with actual warfare would be idle, since the 
military counted upon the railway as the basis of the 
most important plans and movements. Methuen de- 
pended upon the western line throughout his early 
campaign, and Lord Roberts only cut loose from this 
line at Kimberley to march across to the Free State 
line, which is an extension of the Cape Government 
system from Norvals Pont. 

To debit the Imperial Government with the usual 
traffic charges upon troops in passenger trains and upon 
food, forage, and guns, would have not only entailed 
an immense amount of bookkeeping, but it would have 
put on record, for the guidance of disloyal persons, the 
movements, number, and destinations of our soldiers, 
and a complete betrayal of the weight and destination 
of the guns and supplies hurried to the front. On this 
account it was agreed between the Government and 
railway that the latter should charge so much per truck 
or carriage per mile, and that there should be no per 
capita charges for troops or animals except for the few 
that went by regular passenger trains. No weights of 
goods were recorded, the only care being to see that the 
maximum carrying capacity of the trucks was not ex- 
ceeded. 



A RAILWAY RECORD 291 

In future wars this method will be copied, because it 
combines economy with a secrecy which is valuable 
beyond computation. I did not verify the figures, but 
have heard that the prices charged against the Imperial 
Government are equal to a penny per man per mile, 
three-quarters of that sum for a horse, and five farthings 
per ton per mile for supplies. The Railway Depart- 
ment was said not to be losing or profiting unduly by 
this arrangement up to the time when I left the army. 

A plan which was adopted by the military duplicated 
all the railway ofificials, from the managers to the sta- 
tion-masters, with military ofBcials. The principle was 
thoroughly good, and in practice has worked very well. 
Before it was adopted, and when a host of army ofBcers 
gave confusing and irreconcilable orders, the situation 
was a tangled one. Under it the subordinate army 
officers submitted their orders to their superiors, w^ho 
considered them and decided whether they were prac- 
ticable and necessary before communicating them to 
the railway men. 

Thus work was simplified and hastened. It was 
Colonel Girouard who had the wit thus to parallel the 
civil railway system with his own military system, ap- 
pointing an officer of the Royal Engineers to watch 
and to treat with every man in an executive position 
on the railway staff. This was the Colonel Girouard, 
of Canadian birth, who so distinguished himself in the 
recent campaigns in Egypt, where he is still President 



292 A RAILWAY RECORD 

of the Egyptian Railways. In South Africa he was 
Director of Railways with the rank of all the general 
managers combined. General Forestier-Walker was 
the General Commanding the Lines of Communication, 
and other able and important men in the system were 
General Settle, Inspector-General ; and Major Murray, 
traffic manager of the Burmah Railways ; Major Cowie, 
directing manager of the North-Western Railways of 
India ; Captain Waghorn, chief consulting engineer to 
the Indian State Railways ; and Lieutenant Leggett, 
traffic manager for the War Department. 

The civilians, to whom the utmost credit is due for 
the flawless work done by the Cape Government Rail- 
ways, were C. B. Elliott, general manager, and T. R. 
Price, chief traffic manager. Mr. Elliott did not begin 
his South African career as a trained railwayman. He 
was at first registrar to two judges, and then, being 
called to the Bar, began to practise, but after a short 
time returned to the Civil Service. He became Assist- 
ant-Commissioner of Crown Lands and Public Works, 
and when it was decided to appoint a general manager 
of the Cape Railways he was selected. That was in 
1880. 

Mr. Price, the chief traffic manager, joined the rail- 
way service in England in 1863, and received an un- 
usual training, being educated for that profession as 
men are trained for any of the older professions. He 
got his widest experience on the Great Western Rail- 



A RAILWAY RECORD 293 

way. In South Africa he began as traffic superintend- 
ent of a division of the Midland system, and worked 
his way along until he became the agent in the Free 
State and Transvaal for the Cape Railways, and finally, 
in 1893, was appointed to the important post of chief 
traffic manager. Others who deserve great credit for 
the assistance they gave to the Empire in this time of 
its need are Mr. John Brown, engineer-in-chief ; Mr. H. 
M. Beatty, chief locomotive superintendent ; Mr. Cress- 
well Clark, traffic manager of the Midland system ; 
Mr. J. O. Patterson, traffic manager of the Eastern 
system ; and Mr. J. Mitchell, goods superintendent at 
Capetown and its docks— where, by the way, Sir Ed- 
ward Chichester did wonderfully valuable and ingeni- 
ous service in landing all the troops, and unloading all 
the stores. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

SOUTH AFRICA'S FUTURE 

No matter what is urged against it in print, a great 
many men will go to South Africa to seek their for- 
tunes, and another considerable number will be left 
there out of the army. 

I fear that most of these men will regret having ever 
asked even the barest living of South Africa. 

Although the most popular sayings about that un- 
attractive region are such as to deter immigration, the 
idea that fortunes are to be made there by men with- 
out capital remains firmly rooted in many minds. 
What are these sayings? The first is that South 
Africa is a land of 

" Flowers without scent, 
Birds without song, 
Rivers without water. 
Women without beauty, 
Men without honour." 

And latterly, in the army, the phrase of the Canadian 

who parodied General Phil Sheridan's remark about 

Texas, rings in every humorist's mouth : " If I owned 
294 



SOUTH AFRICA'S FUTURE 295 

South Africa and , I would rent out South Africa 

and live in the other place." Such is the opinion 
developed in the minds of practical men who have lived 
there, marched over great reaches of it, and journeyed 
by rail from Capetown to the front. Large parts of it 
are desert lands, no part which any of us has seen is 
fertile, as.we understand the term. 

Where the land yields best it is mainly used for the 
breeding of sheep, horses, goats, and ostriches. It is 
only where water is abundant that we see crops being 
raised, and they are grown in small plots, for water in 
South Africa has been termed " a curio." 

If I paint the picture with its bad qualities too strong 
in colour, please allow me to do so for the sake of the 
good that will come of it. I would rather exaggerate 
the defects of a land that is certain to disappoint new 
settlers, than be guilty of magnifying its few good 
points, and thus delude those who are seeking new 
homes. 

To be strictly just, there is a reasonably rich region 
in that part of Cape Colony which is called the Hex 
River country. Wheat and fruit and the vine flourish 
in that section, the pasturage is good, genuine farming 
is there carried on, and the people are prosperous. But 
the region offers no chance for immigrants. The land 
is all taken up and held at a very high price, and those 
who own it — especially the dominant Dutch — will not 
sell. Instead, they want more acres, even though they 



296 SOUTH AFRICA'S FUTURE 

cannot till what they have — for the Boer is a land-lov- 
ing, land-proud mortal, who estimates his social posi- 
tion and his degree of content by the number of his 
acres. 

There is good grain-producing soil in the eastern part 
of the Orange River Colony, and the ravages of the 
war may send a few — a very few — of those farms into 
the market, but the price will be beyond the purses of 
the average fortune-seekers. There is not, and will not 
be, any of this land to be picked up on what is called 
a settler's claim — i.e.y free to whosoever will build upon 
and work it. 

In the Transvaal, too, good and desert belts alternate, 
and there is plenty of unworked land, I believe, in the 
dry and hilly upper half of that country. But the soil 
which is productive, even in the way of pasturage, is 
not in the market. 

If any man thinks to find new gold or diamond 
mines, he may as well be told that the chances of that 
are precisely equal to his chance of having at his dis- 
posal the time, money, and expert knowledge which 
the great mining corporations have utilised in studying 
the entire country, and in taking liens or paying yearly 
premiums for the first right to work such soils when 
they need or desire to do so. 

The nearest thing to a gold mine that remains open 
to newcomers, in the greater part of those new colonies, 
is the ostrich ; at least, so I was informed by a great 



SOUTH AFRICA'S FUTURE 297 

many shrewd and successful men who live in Natal, the 
Orange River Colony, and the Transvaal. But breeding 
ostriches requires money — for the land and the birds — 
to start with. And one must know or learn the methods 
by which a profit is to be had in that industry. You can- 
not raise ostriches as you take a snapshot photograph 
— by pressing a button and letting nature do the rest. 

In the army I found many young men among the 
Australians, and some few Canadians, who talked of 
remaining in South Africa, so I made it my business 
while I was in Capetown, Kimberley, and Bloemfon- 
tein to ask the leading men for their knowledge and 
opinions as to the inducements the country offers to 
immigrants. It may have merely happened so, but I 
did not meet a man who favoured the coming of a 
large number of new settlers. All who were of British 
blood wished for more men of their own race there — 
in numbers sufficient to outvote the Dutch, but they 
could not promise the newcomers a living. 

All agreed that capital must come first to prepare 
the land for labour. Money in large sums must be 
spent in irrigation, either by tapping the earth or the 
rivers. The individual new settler can turn almost any 
bit of the baked, brown veldt into a laughing garden — 
if—\{ he has the means to buy the land, and the money 
to tap the earth. The very Karroo itself yields water 
almost everywhere at from a few score to 1,500 feet 
depth. It is so like the territory which the Mormons 



298 SOUTH AFRICA'S FUTURE 

of America are rapidly converting into a more than or- 
dinarily fertile wheat and garden country, that no one 
doubts its possibilities. Indeed, wherever men with 
capital, like Mr. John D. Logan, at Majesfontein, have 
pumped the water to the surface, a rich verdure has 
been the quick reward. And every fountain and stream 
in that enormous tract shows a green and smiling 
aspect in its surroundings. 

This, then, is what capital can and will do as the 
pioneer of immigration in South Africa. 

If instead of suggesting a tide of new settlers for 
that land, you asked whether it is not promising ground 
for the investment of large capital in irrigation schemes, 
encouraged by liberal legislation, I would answer that 
I truly think it is. I could not write so positively 
along that line as I do write against the cruelty of en- 
couraging poor men to try their luck there, because I 
did not think to go into that question when I was on 
the ground. But it is certainly true that my shrewdest, 
most practical informants left it to be inferred that 
capital will do well at this, since they all agreed that 
the land must first be purchased or taken up, and then 
prepared for settlers. 

The small proportion of arable land and really good 
pasture land which men are working in the two ex- 
Republics and the Cape Colony is held at what seems 
to most visitors to be extraordinarily high prices. This 
is due to the land greed of the Boer in the first place, 



SOUTH AFRICA'S FUTURE 299 

and, secondly, to the premiums that have been paid by 
the mining corporations upon land they have deemed 
likely to prove rich in metals or minerals. The Boer 
has come to suspect that there is either a gold or a 
diamond mine on every so-called farm ; and though 
he will have nothing to do with mining in any form, 
he is sufficiently over-reaching in his shrewdness to 
determine that he will get a very high price from who- 
ever seeks his land. 

It is as true now as when Mr. Bryce wrote it that 
South Africa is " a vast solitude with a few oases of 
population," and that this is due to its scanty means 
of sustaining life, and its few openings for industry 
unaided by capital. 

In closing this subject, it is necessary to refer to 
another element which must come clearly into the view 
of whoever shrewdly considers the attractions of South 
Africa as a field for immigration. This is the fact that 
all the colonies carry upon their populations the strange 
yet undeniable curse which follows the mingling of the 
white and black races wherever it takes place. Wher- 
ever there is black labour, it is as a rule uneconomical 
and slack, but its place cannot be taken by white toil, 
because of the contempt with which both blacks and 
white regard the white man who works. It will be a 
man of very strong character who will undertake to 
swim against the current of this poisoned opinion — - 
and even he will never cease to suffer from the preju- 



300 SOUTH AFRICA'S FUTURE 

diced view his neighbours will take of his activity. 
White men may not do any manual work in South 
Africa, and, alas ! however much they may laugh at 
the notion, and vow they will do as they please, time 
and local training soon bring them to the common 
level of those who think the white man should lord it 
over the black, and the black man should sweat. 

Finally, nothing in these notes applies to Natal, ex- 
cept my remarks upon the black man's curse. Natal, 
I understand, is the South Africati paradise where 
Britons rule, the earth laughs, and the only discontent 
grows with the thought that, wherever the flag waves, 
Johannesburg is to supply the money for public im- 
provements, and to become the natural and perhaps 
the official capital — which is, of course, the actual case. 
But I can say nothing about Natal as a field for immi- 
gration, because I never set foot there. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

THE LESSONS OF THE WAR 

Almost every author of a book upon the British- 
Boer War has begun with the Cape Dutch in Cromwell's 
time or earlier. Perhaps in thorough justice to that 
livelier subject — " the lessons of the war," we might 
fairly go back to Mr. Gladstone's premiership, but it is 
just as well to commence later. Despite what may be 
said by any man who has been " abed in England " all 
the time, I believe the war was unpreventable even 
before the Jameson Raid. To drive the English out 
of Africa was the hope, and aim, and constant dream 
of every Boer for years before that. 

As business men went out of their way to write home 
about what was to them so obvious, surely the men in 
charge of British national interests should have had 
equally observant and communicative agents ; for if 
Great Britain is to continue a wide-awake business na- 
tion, it should have a wide-awake business Government. 
If " business " is not an acceptable word to the govern- 
ing class in Great Britain, then, since Great Britain is, 

or aims to be, a great business leader among the Powers, 

301 



302 THE LESSONS OF THE WAR 

there is something out of joint in such a situation. 
Besides, there is political business as well as commercial 
business, and shrewd men at either should have known 
what was going forward, and have been prepared for it. 

Once the war was seen to be at hand the War Office 
did the very best that could be done with the men and 
materials at its disposal. It did splendid work. The 
celerity and smoothness with which it transported 
an immense army and all its equipments to South 
Africa were unbroken and unparalleled. No man who 
writes fairly, observes clearly, or thinks justly, Avill 
hesitate to acknowledge and declare this fact. 

The failure to supply to the army the Vickers-Maxim 
quick-firing piece is a bygone trouble, and so is the 
failure to supply the army with up-to-date cannon. 
" Let bygones be bygones," some will say. Yea, verily, 
is the answer of every sincere well-wisher of England, 
but the only way to do that is to see that such bygones 
are not repeated and thus perpetuated, for that would 
alter them from bygone faults to present evils. The 
folly of continuing to use old-fashioned weapons by 
forcing the batteries well within the enemy's range, 
must not be continued ; nor should the makeshift of 
using cumbrous and unsuitably-mounted naval guns as 
military weapons, or the entrusting of troops to incom- 
petent commanders be ever again resorted to. Lyddite 
also, as a weapon against men in the open, was proven 
well-nigh worthless as long ago as December, 1899 ; let 



THE LESSONS OF THE WAR 303 

that be a *' bygone " also, and in future wars, if lyddite 
is used at ail, let it be thrown against walls or buildings. 

Much has been said of the inferior guns of the army ; 
of the defects of the Cavalry arm of the service, of the 
need for opening all ranks to all soldiers and the officer 
ranks to all classes ; of the undermanning and ele- 
mentary training of the Army Medical Corps, — and not 
a word of this had been said in excess of what is just. 
But look also to the generals, and see that there be 
no addition to their number except of men who have 
earned promotion by purely soldierly means ; and that 
none who have failed as generals in this Transvaal war 
are kept in their positions. 

We have seen how very much of the earlier work in 
the war was performed by General French, how ably 
he performed it, and how, for a time (a shocking time 
to all who stayed at home, and hung breathless on the 
despatches from the front) he was the only General 
who could be called a successful leader. The long 
period of non-success was ended by the arrival of Lord 
Roberts, who in two wonderful marches — one from 
Kimberley to Bloemfontein, and the other onward to 
Pretoria — put a new colour on the appearance of the 
war, and ended it with victory for the British. Lord 
Roberts is one of the great figures of military history. 
It is now becoming the fashion to assert that his course 
in South Africa was too mild and lenient. So it was — 
but only at first ; only until he learnt that magnanim- 



304 THE LESSONS OF THE WAR 

ity was thrown away upon his enemy. After that he 
played the game of war differently. But before he is 
criticised at all — even for his earlier leniency — let us all 
make certain whether or not that leniency was the 
Imperial policy, which all the generals were, at first, 
forced to adopt as the military policy also. 

In his army, or while he was in command, two 
exceptionally brilliant leaders attracted the attention 
and the praise of all students of military science. One 
was Ian Hamilton, the other was Baden-Powell. The 
first is a man of great gallantry and dash, tempered by 
unfailing good judgment, and strengthened by splen- 
did confidence in himself and his men. The second is 
distinguished by gifts quite rare in the army — inge- 
nuity and originality, which combine to give him great 
resourcefulness in strategy. Both are magnetic in 
their hold upon all who follow them. A third general, 
new and untried in large operations before this, is Pole- 
Carew, who is like another Phil Sheridan in his tireless 
and ceaseless determination to know the ground ahead 
of him, and to comprehend the plans, mode of war- 
fare, and human attributes of his foe. He was as a 
scourge to the Boers, and in place of the blind and in- 
variable magnanimity which they mistook for idiocy 
and cowardice, he varied leniency with severe justice, 
and did more than we shall ever know to sicken a great 
many Boers of the war. 

Broadwood appears, from this distance, to have done 



THE LESSONS OF THE WAR 305 

exceptionally good work, and so have Hunter and 
Rundle. Kelly-Kenny, too, has more than once shown 
marked ability. Among the Colonials, Brabant and 
Bethune stand out as notable leaders, and the Cana- 
dians and Australians as first-rate fighting men. And 
all the time. General French has continued to do grand 
work, as he did when he stood alone. 

Of the men who were in command when all went 
amiss with the British forces, some have been sent home 
and the others have remained in the field. Of Lord 
Methuen one observes that he has done very well from 
the moment he acted under orders, and in command 
of a subordinate branch of the army. I did him an 
injustice in my own mind when I imagined that the 
nature and character of the pedestrian army, with 
which he began his advance from Orange River, re- 
flected upon his merits as a general. I am now in- 
formed that he was not in the least degree responsible 
for the incompleteness of the force he led. It appears 
that the War Office is likewise free from particular 
blame in the matter. An army of the conventional 
European pattern, without the extra force of mounted 
men whose value in South Africa was not, at the out- 
set, perceived, was put together in England and de- 
spatched to Capetown. Upon this force the then Com- 
mander-in-chief drew for his own use on the east side 
of the continent. The imminent and fearful danger 

of a rising within Cape Colony led to the hurried dc^ 
20 



3o6 THE LESSONS OF THE WAR 

spatch of Lord Methuen with the remnant of what force 
had up to that time been sent from home, spoiled as 
it was by the drafts that had been made upon it by 
one who is not to be either questioned or blamed for 
perfecting his own forces then in actual contact with 
the enemy. It is but the simplest justice to Lord 
Methuen — whose failures while in independent com- 
mand are not wholly accounted for by this explanation 
— that this fact should be known to both his critics and 
his friends. 

But now, having endeavoured to do this bit of justice, 
and hereafter dropping any names of individuals — as 
well as repudiating in advance the thought that individ- 
uals are aimed at through a veil — let me say that a 
serious fault will be committed by the British nation 
if it does not calmly weigh the merits of all the gen- 
erals who held in their keeping the lives of brave men, 
and the glory of their empire. Let the weak ones be 
sifted out, and incapacitated for any future chance to 
prolong wars, lose battles, and drain the fighting blood 
of the nation. If the hurrahs of the mob at the 
home-coming of the wan and battle-stained chiefs are 
able to drown the still small voice of duty, if the tire- 
less machinations of shrewd women close to the Court 
or the Government are able to beat aside an inclina- 
tion toward impartial justice — if these things prevail, 
then the errors of the war against the Boers may be 
repeated in a really great crisis, when, with an aggres- 



THE LESSONS OF THE WAR 307 

sive foe to take advantage of them, the consequences 
to the British may be dire. 

The Boers, with their force of 45,000, or fewer, fight- 
ing men, stood very low in the scale of warlike nations. 
They should not have been able to give a first class 
Power such a task as their conquest has entailed. Let 
no one forget that the conquest was made after twelve 
months of steady fighting, which heavily taxed Eng- 
land's resources. Let no one overlook the cost in life 
and money — or the far greater cost in prestige which 
will accrue if the other nations find that this extraor- 
dinary experience has taught the victors nothing, has 
left them blind to the faults which their rivals clearly 
perceive and mean to profit by. 

A mistake which, more than any other error tended 
to prolong this war, was the futile and misunderstood 
policy of extra leniency, and, as we see now, absurd 
magnanimity to an unworthy foe, too corrupt, too long 
given to suspicion of whatever is good, and too much 
addicted to evil practices to understand British mo- 
tives. 

Coldly, calmly, in candour let us confess that, small 
and weak as the Boer Republics were among the Powers 
of earth, and great as has been the trouble of conquer- 
ing them, their war-work nevertheless fell far short of 
the potentialities of their position. Only suppose that 
instead of playing the part of the still-hunter they had 
taken up the role of the earnest and aggressive warrior, 



3o8 THE LESSONS OF THE WAR 

attacking by night as well as by day ! Only imagine 
what the British task would have been had the Boers 
left merely a containing force before Natal, and marched 
a larger force straight to Durban, at the same time 
capturing De Aar (which would have been an easy 
task), and spreading deep into Cape Colony to set 
aflame with active rebellion the passive disloyalty 
which existed. As matters turned out the Boers made 
the least of their opportunities, yet we know how the 
British Army fared up to the time when a great soldier 
took over its command. What would have happened 
to it had the Boers made the most of their chances ? 
It is this that the British nation must regard, for her 
next foe may easily be an aggressive, offensive, and 
courageous people. 

Every race has its faults, and the Anglo-Saxon is no 
exception to the rule. Its faults in war are that it 
always underestimates the strength and good qualities 
of its enemies, that it usually leaps in unprepared, 
finishes the job with victory gained by hook and by 
crook, and then, instead of profiting by experience, 
applauds itself, distributes bouquets with one hand to 
the other, and dismisses the matter with Dogberrian 
thanks to the Giver of good that it is '* rid of a villain." 
Can our race, or any race, correct its faults ? It will 
be a long step toward their correction if it realises 
what they are. 

A very great mistake, too, is continually, generally 



THE LESSONS OF THE WAR 309 

— even nationally — made in praising the British soldier 
for his willingness to die, for his glorious way of meet- 
ing death, of valiantly going forth " to die for Queen 
and country." The constant repetition of such phrases 
begets a wholly wrong train of thought in the minds 
of both the soldiers and the people. No country wishes 
for soldiers who die well, or who die at all. What all 
desire in their fighting men is the ability to kill and 
live, by employing finesse, by strategy, by adroitness 
in taking cover, by persistence in dealing death while 
they themselves keep shelter. What soldiers are 
wanted for is to fight and slay, and to keep on fight- 
ing and slaying, while doing their utmost to avoid 
damage to themselves. It is for strategy, for science in 
war, that I plead. Where there is a sole dependence 
upon valour without strategy, men must be urged to 
win by dying, but no army can depend on sheer valour 
alone. The costs of victory by such a process are too 
extravagant, and not even those nations which claim 
ability to mobilise three millions of men can afford 
many wars, if they are to be filled with triumphs of 
that sort. 

I have emphasised my admiration of the pluck of 
officers and men wherever I witnessed their fighting, 
but if I have failed to point out instances where strategy 
would have rid such valour of a too heavy accompani- 
ment of death, it is because, writing from the seat of 
war, I did not often write as a critic. Take the case of 



3IO THE LESSONS OF THE WAR 

the ambush at the Kornespruit to show the value of 
pluck and finesse combined. Had General Broadwood 
been content to stand and endeavour to force his way 
past the Boer breastworks, few men of his command 
could have escaped death ; but he rightly utilised Brit- 
ish pluck to hold the Boers in place, while, by the exer- 
cise of British wits, he restored discipline and order, 
and led his men round the enemy's position, and out 
of the jaws of death. 

That is the sort of man to be encouraged— -the 
Baden-Powell and the Broadwood sort — who are to 
give to such masters of strategy as Lord Roberts full 
and complete support in future wars. To bring these 
out of all ranks and classes of the Queen's subjects, the 
army must be thrown wide open to all ranks and classes. 
The present bar, which practically stops all but the 
aristocracy and the sons of rich tradesmen at the door 
to the army, must be taken down. Aristocrats and 
rich men have never yet in any clime or period monop- 
olised the intellectual ability of any people; on the 
contrary, the ranks of the titled and the rich are re- 
cruited from all classes, and as this is arranged so should 
the army be, for brains are the best part of every army's 
equipment, and the army which has the most brain, at 
top, at bottom, and through all ranks, must ever be the 
hardest army to beat. 

But brains are of little good to an army if they are 
allowed to wool-gather, to wander from their work, to 



THE LESSONS OF THE WAR 311 

study that work as a form of sport, or to apply them- 
selves to it temporarily as an incident in a lifetime. 
Those who serve in the British Army should be so paid 
as to cause it to attract earnest and capable men to its 
ranks, and these men must know that if they exhibit 
ambition and fitness there is no position they may not 
attain, with the certainty that their pay will more than 
cover the cost of whatever rank they reach. Thus, in 
time, will commissioned ranks come to represent the 
best material obtainable, and at once, when officers can 
live upon their pay, the dilettanti, the mere sportsmen, 
the simple seekers after a society hall-mark, will be 
shouldered out of the way of the earnest men who will 
take up the profession of arms as men take up other 
professions — meaning to master them, to live by them, 
to rise by them to honour and power. 

The army, when reconstructed, must be of a different 
personnel, but not necessarily larger than, or even as 
large as, at present. It should be maintained as a leaven 
for whatever strength it may reach when a great army 
is needed. This suggestion applies to the army at home. 
Great, very great store should be set upon the armies of 
the Colonies, whose men, as we saw them in South 
Africa, maybe equalled but certainly cannot be excelled. 
Each Colony should possess its own army-nucleus, sup- 
ported, equipped, and trained by the Imperial authori- 
ties. The parts of all these armies should be inter- 
changeable, or at least should be of equal value in the 



312 THE LESSONS OF THE WAR 

estimates of the rank and file of all the armies in the 
opinion of the authorities and people. 

This would serve to bind the Empire together with 
steel. To the Colonial forces will come a proud and in- 
dependent class of men, such as have the colonial spirit 
of democracy and of popular equality. They are as 
amenable to military discipline as any men — more so 
than most soldiers of the day — to all except such in- 
fluences as maybe odious and demoralising to free men. 
All these armies or forces should be made well ac- 
quainted with one another by joint participation in great 
annual manoeuvres held now in England, the next year 
in Canada or Australia, later in South Africa. Nothing 
should be left to foster a feeling of superiority among 
the officers or men of any one force. 

Dull, indeed, were those who did not learn in South 
Africa this year that the Colonial has very strong merits 
which the Regulars lack, just as the Regulars have great 
and necessary qualities needed by the Colonials. We 
know the merits of the Regulars, and acknowledge and 
value them. Those of the Colonials are not so well and 
generally understood. The Colonials won deserved ad- 
miration for their individual independence and initiative, 
their skill in taking cover, and the adaptability by which 
they were quickly able to meet the Boer with something 
very like his own tactics. For one thing, the Colonial 
was not bound by conventionalities which were old at 
Agincourt, and therefore he could take his part in battle 



THE LESSONS OF THE WAR 313 

when he could not see or hear his officer, even after he 
saw his officer killed. He preferred to fight at ease, and 
if he was allowed to do so, and could thus kill more 
Boers (or kill Boers more quickly) in his shirt-sleeves, 
he would have fought without his coat. This means 
something to those who saw the Regulars, under a blaz- 
ing, tropical sun, rigged up like dray-horses, with more 
straps and hooks, bundles, bottles and bags, than one 
would think were sufficient to disable any human being, 
except an European soldier. Poor Tommy ! Doubt- 
less he began to take on this load even before Agin- 
court, and every half-century has seen it increased, 
until presently there will be more impedimenta than 
soldier behind each rifle, if some one does not call a 
halt on the process. 

Unquestionably such a fraternity of fighting men of 
the Old and the New Worlds would quickly relieve the 
home army from the red tape which at times has 
seemed to be strangling it. If that were the case the 
resultant benefits would be too great and numerous to 
be set forth in a chapter, or perhaps in a separate book. 
Without red tape, a command of which I know could 
have got food for its starving horses the other day, in 
spite of the fact that the officers' requisition was written 
upon white instead of upon blue paper. But for red 
tape, one beleaguered city that I know could have been 
defended by happy colleagues, instead of jarring and 
discordant factions. But for red tape, a well-known 



314 "THE LESSONS OF THE WAR 

English painter might have sketched a certain glorious 
sunset at Orange River, instead of being told not to do 
so, " as he was without a pass to visit the village, and 
consequently was not legally there." But for red tape, 
the officers of more than one army hospital might have 
bought beds, sheets, pillow-cases, thermometers, and 
measuring-glasses for the use of the sick and wounded, 
instead of letting such care depend upon the chance of 
obtaining charity from persons whose contributions 
were not intended for hospital equipment, but for the 
dainties, the luxuries, and the extra comforts which 
red tape in this way prevented our sick and wounded 
men from enjoying. 

The subject is indeed too vast. And yet it can all be 
comprehended in the one sentence : thorough Reform 
of the Army is Essential to secure the Prosperity and 
Safety of Great Britain, 



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